


Lunchtime

by betp



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Crack, F/M, M/M, Twilight!AU, a fire
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-19
Updated: 2013-03-12
Packaged: 2017-11-21 15:02:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 21,195
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/599116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betp/pseuds/betp
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is 16 when his mother dies and he moves back to Beacon Hills to stay with his dad. He isn't expecting much out of such a small town, so he's surprised to find out there are vampires in his high school. More importantly, though, Lydia Martin skipped school on Friday to go shopping, and Stiles isn't sure he can go on without her. </p><p>This is a Twilight AU and I wish I could say I was sorry, but I don't speak English.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Before I posted this, I wrote a summary of Teen Wolf using exclusively overreaching breakfast puns.

Beacon Hills.

I've never really liked Beacon Hills, you know. It's all—tiny, and quiet, and—whatever. I grew up in Escondido, which—yeah, it's not fuckin' Sacramento, I guess. But it's bigger. Beacon Hills is _diminutive_. A lot of people? Don't even know it _exists_. Because it's in this tiny _valley_ and surrounded by _hills_ and _trees_ and shit. There is no Wal-Mart in Beacon Hills. The downtown consists of two clubs I'm not old enough to go in (one's a gay bar, though, so good on you, Beacs), the post office, the police station, and a pawn shop.

So, uh—I never liked Beacon Hills. I used to spend, like, summers there with my dad, but then he started spending summers down home instead, since I bitched about it. So I haven't been back up there since I was like eleven or twelve, but now I'm—uh, I'm moving up there, because my mom… well, my mom did this thing where—where she _died_ , and—

Anyway. _Beacon Hills_. Hills that are beacons. My dad's the sheriff there. It's pretty great. It means that he comes to pick me up in the cruiser, which I wish I could say I was mortified by like every other sixteen-year-old guy on the planet, but _nope_. Just as pleased as when I was six. I love my _dad_ , and I love my dad's _job_ , and I love my dad's job's _car_ , and I just _really like_ vehicles with radios and flashing lights and that divider thing behind the front seats. So I'm sitting in there and Dad's slapping my hand away from all the buttons when he goes, "I found a great car for you, Stiles."

A car for _me_! My dad got a _car_ for me, just for _Stiles_. I don't get to ride in the cruiser every day, but I get to _drive_ myself _everywhere_! I'm getting all excited in my head when I realise it's definitely not in my head, and—yep, saying everything out loud. Dad smirks wryly at me. Whatever. I hug him and he goes, "Dammit, Stiles—I'm _driving_!" But he hugs me back. As best as he can. That's how Stilinskis _roll_ : Illegally.

We get there and it turns out Dad got me this used, blue Jeep. It's from, like, the 70's or something. First thing I do is hug that fucker. It's _so_ perfect. It's beat up and second-hand and ignored and loud and clunky and awkward. This Jeep is _me_. I love it more than curly fries, I'm serious. "Dad. Dad, this is the best. Dad, this is the best thing," I tell him until he smiles and claps a hand on my shoulder and goes, _well, I'm glad you like it, son_ , and heads inside.

Next thing I do is carry my, like, bag and a half of stuff up to my room. I don't have much stuff, which is weird. (I should probably supplement my winter wardrobe at some point, since it's known to snow here. If it snowed in Escondido, the world would end.) Then I tell Dad I'm gonna take a nap. Then I hide under my blanket and miss my mom so much I feel physical sensations of loss. Like my arm is gone or something. Or my torso. My eyes.

It isn't fair.

My mom wasn't perfect. She was in her late thirties. I think she was gonna turn forty in a year or two. She had brown eyes, like me. We argued sometimes, and I think it might have been because I remind her of my dad. I'm too curious and too hyperactive, and I have a lot of useless information to thrust on her at dinner. Did you know vampires were originally written to share characteristics with _rats_? Bram Stoker was the first to romanticise them into studly gentlemen! Bram Stoker was the original Stephenie Meyer, right down to the (not-so-)subtle enforcing of strict gender roles. Mom always sighed and shook her head when I told her that shit, but she never told me outright, "No one cares, Stiles," which is pretty much the catchphrase of my entire high school back in Escondido.

My mom wasn't talkative or fun-loving, I guess. She grated on my nerves sometimes because when she did talk, it would be rude for me to interrupt, but she focused so much on details that it took her for-goddamn-ever to tell a story that I didn't marginally care about in the first place. My attention span is already shitty enough without forcing myself to pay rapt attention while my mom tries to remember what color her coworker's car is. But I'd make myself do it, and she would always ruffle my hair and thank me for putting up with her. And I'd squirm out from under her hand and she'd laugh at me. Or roll her eyes, depending on if she had one of her headaches.

My mom wasn't skinny like me, she was sort of overweight, until she got sick. She had shoulder-length blonde hair until then, too. Her favorite food was carrot cake. I forgot her birthday the year before last, because I'm an airhead and a terrible son, but I made up for it by baking her a big-ass carrot cake from scratch, which was _not_ easy, let me tell _you_. She forgave me and we ate the cake together. The entire thing. See, my mom wasn't perfect, but she was my _mom_. My mom. She's gone now.

She's gone now.

Anyway. Beacon Hills. And I do this thing where I sort of maybe cry myself to sleep. But you're not allowed to tell anyone.

.

The next day is my first day at school, which—like, I'm outgoing, I guess, and I'm pretty damn funny, if I do say so myself. But that doesn't make me good with _people_? I had friends in Escondido, but we argued a lot. Social cues and Stiles aren't always a hundred percent compatible. So I'm not expecting social success and hordes of friends or anything. I get there in my rad-as-hell blue Jeep, and sort of blunder out into the parking lot, and _basically_ everyone ignores me. That's what happens. The anonymity is actually sort of soothing despite my extroversion; I'm used to it. It's like home, being ignored. I'm used to people not _seeing_ me.

I sort of coast through to the main office and get handed a schedule and some tall guy in a football tie and pleated khakis drags me to my first class and plunks me down into an empty seat.

In front of and to the left of me is this kid with dark hair. He turns and gives me this crooked grin and hisses, "Hey."

I nod.

"I'm Scott."

"Stiles," I say. Then I add, "is my name," because I am aware that that doesn't really sound like a name. It sounds like a plural noun. "I am Stiles." The girl behind Scott, an angular, raven-haired beauty, makes a face at my awkward, which—hey, par for the course. 'Sup, ladies, need a man who can vaguely unnerve you? I'm the guy for the job. _Weirdo_ , that's my name, don't wear it out.

But the Scott guy just grins sunnily at me, so _okay_. "You're Sheriff Stilinski's son," Scott says. "My mom's coworker was talking about you."

I brace myself for the _I heard about your mom, I'm sorry_ that I got from three different people in administrative faculty positions and two students while I got myself set up this morning, but Scott just goes, "She said you're wicked smart."

Definitely wasn't expecting that, and I'm torn between the urge to preen and the embarrassed red that shoots into my face. I split the difference and combine a squirm with a "Well, I guess I get some grades or something," and he shakes his head, eyes wide.

"I don't get any grades, ever."

I grin. "They just trap you here and refuse to give you assignments," I nod. "I know that feel." And that's how I somehow score a lunch buddy. 

"That's Lydia Martin," Scott says in the hallway on the way to the cafeteria later, pointing at this fucking goddess with wavy, light red hair and pristine legs and a plaid skirt. "She's really popular." There's a Ken Doll wrapping his tentacles around her perfect, shapely hips and pressing his sucker-mouth onto her face, and I should be the _president_ of mixing metaphors.

"It's weird that she brought her pet octopus to school," I say.

Scott snorts. "That's Jackson, her boyfriend. He's captain of the lacrosse team. I heard you play."

"I do," I say. "But I'm not playing on a team that's led by an aquatic creature."

"He's _not_ an octopus," Scott admonishes firmly, but he's grinning again. "He's a jock. But I'll admit they're really similar."

"Practically interchangeable," I concur.

He leads me into the cafeteria and that's where I see _them_. _They_ are these fuckers that roll into lunch late, order full lunches, eat nothing, and lounge around their table staring at people. They are weird as shit and I don't like them. They taste evil. Their _heads_ are _evil_.

There's four of them, a guy and three girls. The guy is this serious, brown-haired fucker who looks sort of old to be in high school. As for the girls, there's a girl with a dark brown pixie cut and a terrifying glare on her face; the girl that sat behind Scott in class, with curled black hair and dimples; and a girl with long, honeyish brown hair and a smug look on her face.

They're right in the fucking center of the cafeteria, so that the other tables seem to orbit around them. They sort of radiate power, so like about all things that are beyond my lowly touch, I get curious about them. "Who are they?" I ask Scott, bobbing my head in their general direction.

He looks up. "Oh. Uh, those are Mr. Argent's kids. They're all adopted or something." He forces a handful of fries into his mouth, and then talks _around_ them, which sort of makes me love him; seriously, are we related? "The guy is Chris. The pissed-off girl is Victoria. She and Chris are sort of—a thing." He swallows, gulps his Coke, and then goes on. "The extremely beautiful girl with black hair is Allison. She's a real-life angel." I nod understandingly. "And then the last one's Kate. She's captain of the girls' swim team."

I wonder half-aloud how she looks in a bathing suit.

"Pretty good," Scott says.

Just then, Kate flips her hair over her shoulder and looks at me. Her adopted siblings smirk. They were totally talking about me right then. I stare, unabashed, because, like, that's what you _get_ for being a weird, dating, adopted orgy cult with pale-ass skin and angular jaws and shit. Kate grins at me.

Scott doesn't notice them all looking because he's scraping his mashed potatoes into a heart. "Not as good as Allison, though," he muses.

It's _probably_ my notably active imagination, but Kate's grin appears to falter.

.

My next class goes very predictably: Kate Argent is in it, and the only empty seat is next to her. I'm about an inch away from throwing my hands up and just being all like, "Really, author of my life? This is what you came up with? Dramatic convenience?" But Kate's kind of hot, so I'm okay with it. In fact, the class is rife with hot girls: I notice immediately that Lydia's in the front row filing her nails, and her hair glistens like the north star, and I totally have a crush on her. And I can't take stock of how many other attractive ladies are in my class because basically the list will always begin and end with Lydia. So the class is rife with two hot girls. That's more than enough for me. I'd have been thankful for just the one. I flounder my way down the aisle and into the chair next to Kate, and she looks startled by me and claps a hand over her face. I myself am startled, Kate. The feeling is now mutual. I, Stiles Stilinski, have been rendered speechless. Call Guinness.

I gape at her, her weird and sudden violent aversion to me. She returns with what I can only describe as a horrified, vehement _glare_ , eyes black as sin and spitting hate. Then I direct a feeble "oh dear god" at the front of the room and pointedly do not look at her for the rest of my entire life. Her fingernails dig into the desk and I can tell how fucking _tense_ she is. Do I _smell_ or something? I sure as shit do _not_. I'm a clean motherfucker. I'm clean as _tits_. So _what_ is her _problem_?

Kate's out of her seat and out the door before the first sound wave reaches my ear from the bell, and I watch her sail out the door and all I can think is, _autobots, roll out!_

Followed by a much more coherent "Good riddance, freak."

.

After school Scott convinces me to try out for lacrosse, even though I just got to Beacon Hills, like, thirty seconds ago. Jackson "Sea Creature" Whittemore performs for the world like the beauteous ballerina he is. His _leaps_ and _whirls_ take my breath away. By which I mean I hate him more with every passing second, and I'm startled to find it has little to do with his requirement of Lydia Martin's rack for survival. After he deliberately crashes into us and calls out, "'Scuse me, nerds!" for the _third_ time, Scott calls him Asshole O'doucherson, which I find more amusing than I probably should.

The practice itself, independent of Jackson, is difficult because Coach Finstock willed it so. I've been to lacrosse tryouts before, and they're—well, lacrosse tryouts. But I don't think I've ever had a coach so bent on shouting inane things constantly like his life force depends on it.

Scott and I both make second string.

"Hey, you just started today, didn't you?" asks this perfect specimen of a guy in the locker room afterwards.

"Uh, uh-huh," I say. I'm talkative, that doesn't mean I always have things to say. I just say them anyway. "Yep, just today. Yep." See?

"Cool. I'm Danny." He flashes blindingly white teeth and flexes and shows off his tan skin and shakes around his black hair and doesn't actually do any of that aside from standing there and looking cool.

"Stiles. Is me." While I go ahead and do the opposite of that.

"Uh, all right. Cool. Hope you like it here." I open my mouth and then close it. Then I grin like an idiot. He gives me this polite smile and takes his dimples and perfect pecs back to whatever heavenly land he descended from.

"Here I go, human social mistake," I say, turning back to the locker. "I am the conversational equivalent of thinking there is one more stair than there is and having your foot shoot down through the air and startle you into momentary horror."

"I feel like it's not your fault," Scott says, pulling on a t-shirt next to me. "Danny's really cool. Everyone likes him. He makes everyone suck in comparison."

"You're too kind to me," I reply. "While he is clearly The Coolest, I feel I deserve credit for at least some of the sheer ruin that went down in that interchange."

"Okay. You get full-ass credit for the 'Stiles is me' moment. That was all you."

.

When I get back from school, I'm ready to begin Hide Under Blanket And Cry Tears Of Pure Desperation Episode 2: Depression Kicks Back, but I get waylaid by life, which—wow, thanks, _Obama_.

See, it's dinnertime when I get back and my dad rolls in and suggests In'n'Out. And while that's a really good idea, it's absolutely not because I saw the little handouts on _how to eat and live heart healthy_ on the counter from his doctor and I know how shit should be going down if I don't want to be an orphan.

So I basically tell him to suck a dick and I start making a casserole out of spinach. He grumbles the whole time I'm making it (so that I have to start a rousing performance of music from the Legend of Zelda: _Song of Healing_ might help his heart), but when it's done and he puts it into his face, his eyes light up from within, like—like—shit, I don't know. Like something whose eyes light the fuck up, what am I, the _light-up eyes catalogue_? Jesus. Anyway, my spinach casserole is a hit, and Dad congratulates me warmly.

"Thanks, dude," I say, carting the dishes to the sink. "It's important that you live forever, so I hope you'll eat things that don't make you stop doing that."

"I work late a lot and don't have the time, energy, or skill to cook myself healthy dinners," he replies, pouring himself a glass of whiskey. "So maybe I'll just—get _extra lettuce_ on my burgers or something."

" _Christ_ , Dad," I say, rounding on him. "Don't—no. I'll just. I'll just make dinner from now on, okay? I'll bring you lunch when you work on weekends or something. Just—Just _no_."

He looks at me for a second like my reaction was unwarranted, and I feel myself go a little red, realising I just shouted at him. I haven't shouted at my father, like, _ever_. But he spares me by putting a hand on my shoulder and agreeing to it. I have this ridiculous urge to cry, then, that I suppress valiantly. Then, to ruin me, he adds, "Oh, and speaking of Stiles descending from on high to save lives with his healthy meals, you should wrap up part of this and bring it across the street."

I stare at him, dull-eyed. "What, is there a—a spirit that needs sacrificing to?" I immediately regret saying this and sort of wince, but if he notices, Dad doesn't say anything.

"No, to the house, Stiles. Across the street there is a home, and in it lives a young man that you probably remember from when you were a kid. Derek Hale? Dark hair, whatever eyes?"

Of course I remember. Well, I'm pretty visual, so I remember what he looks like, at least. "They were green or something."

Dad nods. "Yes, green or something. Anyway, Derek, ah—he lost his family in a house fire about six years ago, and he very recently lost his sister, Laura. So he's kind of on his own, son, and I think it would be nice if you brought him some of your food."

He had me at 'lost his family.' I'm already dishing the shit into a Gladware for Derek by the time Dad finishes the request. "Okay, but you owe me," I say, even though I don't mind at all.

.

Derek opens the door in a leather jacket, shoes on and everything. It's _really weird_. He looks unhappy, deeply unhappy, and also frankly terrifying. He's older than I am, if I remember correctly, just a few years. He's about my height—I'm 5'11", _just saying_ —but he's wider than I am. Not in, like, a fat way. He's sheer muscle mass. _Shoulders_. I push the container at him. "Hey, I'm Stiles, I live across the street now, and I'm feeding you this dinner," I rattle off. I'd planned it in my head, but it still didn't quite come out right.

He takes the food without looking at it; he's puzzling at me. "Across the street. You're Stilinski's kid."

"That's what it says on my driver's license," I reply, nodding sagely. "Stilinski's Kid."

He _almost_ smirks. "I remember you. You used to come here when you were just little." He peers at the food, then, trying to see it through the cloudy, clear plastic. Then he looks back at me, and his eyes are definitely green, no _something_ about it. "Thought you had a different name."

"I did. But I've since morphed into a different man, Derek. I've evolved. Now I'm Stiles, baker of spinach casseroles."

"Is _that_ what this is."

"Yep."

He holds it and looks at me, and I stick my hands in my pockets and look at him, and we sort of nod at each other. He knows why I'm here in Beacon Hills, I can see it on his face. And he knows why I'm on his porch feeding him, too. So there isn't really anything to say. We sort of just stand there and accept each other for much longer than anyone else would let me stand in front of them. But if anyone is good at sensing phantom awkward in a situation and overcorrecting, it's me. So at some point I flush and go, "Well, I hope you eat it and stuff. You can bring back the container thingy whenever." I step back and stumble on the steps, an action of suave perfection that I'm sure takes his breath away. "Let me know if you like it, and if you do, I'll, uh—" I shrug. "Make you a different thing to eat."

His face doesn't change, except it gets a little more open, if that makes sense. Then, he adds a "Thanks" as if by afterthought.

.

That night, I wake up from a dream with a muffled shout. I heave wracking gasps and shudder terribly in the wake of images of ruined, wasted corpses reaching for me from shadowed hospital beds, tears running from their cavelike eye sockets.

I'm coated in a cold sweat that sticks me right through my t-shirt to the sheets, and I bury my anguish in my hands.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stiles' parents are--were--divorced. It's okay, it happens sometimes. They were on pretty good terms, compared to the McCalls. 
> 
> Last time Stiles saw Derek, he was six and Derek let him play with all of his legos. 
> 
> Let me know if there need to be more tags lol.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **LAST TIME ON _LUNCHTIME_** : Stiles' mom kicked the bucket, so he moved to Beacon Hills to stay with his dad, the sheriff! At school he met Scott and learned about the mysterious Argents! Then he made second string on the lacrosse team and was introduced to his exorbitantly hot neighbor/childhood friend Derek! 
> 
> **THIS WEEK ON _LUNCHTIME_** : Stiles is lonely, Stiles almost dies, Stiles gets a love-shaped crush, Stiles gets stalked! 
> 
>  
> 
> I continue to not be sorry.

The next two weeks go by pretty uneventfully, as far as first two weeks of school go. Scott's my friend, and we attend lacrosse practice together. Finstock makes us practice even when it's wet out, which pretty much demolishes any novelty the wetness would've held for me up to now, but Scott and I joke about it building character and putting hair on our chests to the point where we almost start to believe it. Almost.

Over the second weekend, I hang out with Scott and we watch children's movies (because Scott is less socially adept than I am). When we watch the Little Mermaid, we keep calling Ursula "Jackson," which has us laughing more than it would anyone else, so I'm kind of really glad I met him.

Kate Argent hasn't been at school, but more _importantly_ , Lydia Martin was _missing_ last Friday, and I was afraid I'd never see her immaculate face _again_ , but then she reappeared on Monday and it was all a false alarm. She'd gone shopping instead of going to school. She's perfection _embodied_.

Allison Argent asks Scott to the Sadie Hawkins dance (that is apparently happening soon) on Tuesday, and he manages a cool, collected positive response in her presence, and then dies about seventy-three times in front of just me, which I feel like is an important milestone in our friendship, so I introduce him to the Stilinski hug.

So mostly I'm just wandering around the school while things happen—not even things, these are minimal events. These are thinglets. Thinglets happen and I sort of float around, feeling like everything that happens to or around me is some kind of minor accident.

On my third Wednesday in Beacon Hills, when I end up in chemistry like driftwood ends up on the coast, Kate Argent is there. I sit next to her and keep my hands visible so she doesn't get spooked and punt me across the room or something. I avoid eye contact, but then she scares the shit out of me by speaking. "Hey," she says, and " _Whoa_ ," I say loudly and jolt away from her.

She's looking at me pretty openly, face set to look pleasant, and she cocks an eyebrow when I look at her. "Whoa," I repeat softly.

"Didn't get a chance to introduce myself last week," she says amicably, pretending I didn't yelp like I'd been shot when she greeted me. "I'm Katherine Argent. You can call me anything _but_ Katie. Most people call me Kate."

I nod quizzically. "I'm Stiles," I say, and it's the first time since I came here that I've introduced myself normally. "You can call me Stiles." Nope, fucked it up.

"I know," she grins. "Allison told me."

Right, Allison's her weird-adopted-sister-thingy. I look at her, wondering if they're half-sisters or something. But they don't look alike. Suddenly, I do a double-take at her face. Her _eyes_. "Do you—" I start to say, and then I cut myself off. But it's too late. So I just plow on: "Did you get contacts?"

Her face does a thing. I can't really tell what kind of emotion it conveys. Shock, consternation? Constipation? I don't even know. "No," she says blankly.

"Oh. Your eyes looked like they were a different color." Her eyes are fucking weird, dude. I remember distinctly that her eyes were black that first day. They were the same color as her pupils. I couldn't even _find_ her pupils. But now they're, like, hazel. Kind of dull, greyish hazel. Normal eyes. _What_.

"So how come you moved to Beacon Hills?" she asks.

I feel my face shut down and I turn from her, start flipping through my notebook, looking for a blank page. "Uh, my mom died."

"Oh, sorry," she says. Her tone irks me. It sounded more like a _sorry your dvr didn't record Oprah_ than a _sorry you had to watch your mother shrink away into the shadows of agony_. Maybe I'm just being overly sensitive. I squirm. "So you came out here to be with your dad."

"Yeah."

"From where?"

"Escondido. It's like half an hour away from San Diego."

She nods seriously. And I stare at her. Because I can't begin to start to possibly think about imagining why she cares, or why she thinks she can just act like she didn't shit herself and eat it last time we spoke, or who in the fuck this bitch thinks she is. _Nor_ can I imagine why she'd lie to me about wearing _contacts_ or whatever. I'm puzzling over her desperately when I sneeze on her, and that basically ends the conversation. Probably because I don't apologise.

.

After school, Dad isn't home. Working late tonight.

Mom left Dad when I was just a little kid, and you can tell by looking around his little house that he never got over her. He doesn't have any recent photos of her, but he never bothered to take down their wedding photo, framed on the mantle, or the few family portraits, starring Baby Stiles, that sprinkle the walls here and there.

I hate them. I hate these pictures, but it's like they're covered in acid. I can't touch them, I can't take them down, I can't shake the urge to take a bat to them. I can't stand seeing Mom around.

Being in this house alone is like being imprisoned.

I self-medicate in the only way I really know how: I dip into Dad's liquor.

I'm not _doing_ anything. I'm just drinking and watching terrible, terrible movies. _Baby Geniuses_? Who came _up_ with that? Who _wrote_ this? Who can I _blame_ for this _movie_? I can't stop watching it.

Eventually—and I have no idea _when_ , frankly—the doorbell rings and because drunk!Stiles has no concept of good decision making (due in no small part to the fact that drunk!Stiles exists only because there _was_ no good decision making), I answer it.

It's Derek, holding the Gladware box, empty and scrubbed clean. "Hey," he says, and I am unduly delighted.

"Derek," I say, beaming. "You're here. On my porch. So _that's_ cool."

He makes the face I'd imagine someone making if they just saw their dog run into a wall. "You are drunk," he says pleasantly, with an undercurrent of sarcastic pep.

And sarcasm is my shit, even when I'm drunk. Perhaps… _especially_ when I'm drunk? "Better pull back on the _reins_ , there," I tell him. "You're gonna put my dad out of a job if you keep broadcasting those breathtaking deduction skills." My words are slurred, but _I_ understand them. I can't tell if Derek does, because he blows them off.

"Why are you drunk, Stiles?"

"Usual reasons, dude." I lean heavily on the door, making it creak a little. "Sitting around cutting and listening to _Give Me Novocain_ isn't quite up to snuff now that I've actually got something to angst about." That revelation tastes heavy and awful, and drunk or not, I'm _not_ crying in front of Derek Hale. So I add, "It just doesn't _cut it_. Get it?"

Derek doesn't get it. I mean, maybe he does, but that shit is fucking _hilarious_ and he isn't even giving me a smile. He just grabs my elbow and marches me straight into the kitchen and plunks me down at the table like he lives here.

"You're confused," I say. Then I shake my head. "I mean, _I_ am. _I_ am confused." What a silly mistake he made. _I_ made.

"Don't hurt yourself," he deadpans as he putters around in my kitchen, and I shriek a peal of giggles. See, as far as I could tell, Scott was the only one who made video game jokes in this town. The citizens of Beacon Hills think hiking is a video game. I laugh at that thought, too, but I get distracted when Derek sits down next to me and forces a cup of coffee on me.

"You didn't put any milk or sugar in it," I protest as I take a gulp. Then I make The Worst Face and moan, "It's so bitter."

"Drink it anyway," he says, and I look at him.

Instantaneously, it seems, the giddy pleasure I got from Derek's visit dissipates and I'm sitting and staring emptily at him. It feels like my frown is carved into my face. "I am," I say conversationally, voice wavering, "very alone."

Derek looks mildly surprised by my admittance for a second, and then it melts into this knowing, haunted stare, and he nods once. He gets it.

He just—he _gets_ it, and I lean on him, and he doesn't push me away. "Get drunk with me," I say softly.

"No," he says. After a moment, he amends, "I can't."

That's really all I remember. I assume he leaves and I go to bed, because I wake up in the wee hours, fully clothed sans shoes and sporting an extraordinary headache. There is a phone number written on my right arm in Sharpie. I smirk blearily at it and program it into my phone.

.

The next day, it's pouring rain violently, which might _ordinarily_ be the worst thing ever, but I actually appreciate the cold, wet weather because it makes it easy on my hangover. My perfect and wonderful Jeep handles the torrents on the roads with finesse. I, myself, am not as adept at _movement_ as my Jeep is, but what I lack in general _coordination_ , I make up for in _gusto_ , and I sort of manage to edge around the baby lake that is the blacktop. That is, until a car hits me.

I'm serious. There is this really cool thing that happens where a pickup truck hydroplanes and it heads right for this yellow car, and I freeze, because I am _in between the pickup and the yellow car_.

But something stops the truck from actually crushing my reedy ass with its screeching metal body, and I hit my head on the ground before I can see what. I think I black out for a second. Just a _second_. Then I sit up and it's _Allison Argent_ , hands out and embedded in the side of the car. Her eyes are wide, hair mildly askew, lips parted.

"Allison," I grind out, sounding totally wrecked. Which: yeah, bad word choice.

"Are you okay?" she demands.

"Am _I_ okay," I parrot. "You dented a _car_ with your _palms_."

She sucks air in through her teeth and pulls the dent out, with her _hands_. I don't think I've made it _clear_ enough that she is _altering_ the _metal bodywork_ of a _pickup truck_ , using her _fingers_.

"Your _hands_ ," I shout.

She shushes me desperately, and I fall quiet, which makes me aware that there are screaming people all over the place suddenly. Allison reaches over and knocks a vague dent into the car behind us. "The truck hit the car," she tells me.

I shake my head wildly, ignoring the pang in my skull. " _You_ did that, with your _body_ ," I squeak.

"No." Her tone is firm, abruptly, need burning in her eyes. "The truck hit the car, and I knocked you out of the way. I was _right next to you_."

"You totally were," I tell her, head bobbing. "Except you definitely _weren't_ —"

"Stiles—"

"You _have_ to tell me later," I say loudly.

"Stiles…"

"Allison!"

She claps a hand over my mouth. "Fine!" she hisses. "Fine, I will, but you can't tell _anyone_ —"

And then there are people dragging us out from behind the truck and off to the hospital.

.

I lose sight of Allison immediately and spend way too long getting examined and prodded by nurses, apologised to by Greenberg (who was driving the pickup truck that nearly turned me into a pancake), and having the same conversation over and over again until it sounds tinny and bland in my ears.

_Do you remember anything?_

Not really. It happened so fast.

_How'd you get out of the way?_

Allison knocked me out of the way.

_Ha ha ha a joke about your masculinity._

Ha ha ha.

And then, my dad shows up and acts like a dick to Greenberg. Which: normally I wouldn't want relative strangers being verbally abused on my behalf—it's bad for my rep and whatever—but this is happening because Dad sees Greenberg as the direct cause of something bad that happened to his son. It's really touching and I hug him. Then, I meet Scott's mom, who diagnoses me with a concussion. Because she's a nurse, not because she smelled my brain bruise or something. And then, I totally get to go home and skip school. So even though I almost died and my best friend's girlfriend is probably secretly some kind of superhero, the day is looking _up_. 

I'm on the couch in my pajamas Googling Allison's abilities and reading the Twilight fanfictions that come up when the doorbell rings a billion times and I have to stumble over and open it up. Just like the last time the doorbell rang and my head was aching, it's Derek. This time I'm slightly more lucid.

"Stiles, what happened?" he asks before I can say anything.

He's earnest, and it makes me blush in spite of myself. "Uh. Hi, Derek."

"What _happened_."

"Nothing, it's fine. I just, um—there was a car accident. But I'm fine." Derek's eyes are wide, and green, and he's sort of pale—er, paler than usual, and I actually start to get pissed off looking at his stupid face and his broad fucking shoulders. How is he allowed to walk around like that? "How old are you?" I demand sharply.

He looks caught off guard, which, _fuck this guy_ , is adorable. "I just turned twenty in September," he mumbles.

"God, can you just cut it out, with the _face_?"

Now he looks irritated. Home, sweet home. "What."

"Come in out of the rain," I snap. "I'll make you lasagna."

His face softens and he shuffles into my house.

"Yeah, I got a bump on the head," I say as I get out a glass pan, "but I'll live. I'll be on bench-warming duty for a long time in lacrosse, but that isn't really a change." I chuckle, lean on my elbows on the countertop, and look at Derek, who is sitting on a bar stool and staring at me intently.

After a beat, he goes, "Are you usually on the bench?"

"Only _always_. Back home I only got offered to be in one game, and it was because half the first string got the flu. But then the night of the game, _I_ got the flu, and my mom made me…" I trail off and crank open a can of sauce hard enough that if it were a person, I'd snap their neck.

"But this school's smaller than your old one, isn't it?"

I look at him, and he raises his eyebrows, and there, again, is that weird combination of wanting to sock him and hug him at the same time. "Oh," I say. "I guess." I smirk. "So less people will have to start puking their guts up before I can play. One time, when I was on the middle school team, I tripped a kid on the first string on the field so I could play. But then I tripped, too. Sprained my ankle. Sat next to him on the bench."

"Fate," Derek says.

"Abso _lute_ ly. I wasn't going to try out when I got here, but Scott really wanted me to, and… Well, he's, like, _the_ friend I have here, so. Not that I guess—I mean, like I could make more friends. But see—see, I can turn off my personality. And meet people. But pretending to be someone I'm not always ended badly for me." I shrug one shoulder. "Mom always told me not to do that, and I always blew her off."

I blush, and glance up to see how uncomfortable Derek is, but he just nods sagely.

"Like, I want to be the—kind of person she'd want me to be?" I rub the back of my neck. "Sorry, do—do I talk too much? Be honest."

 Derek shrugs. "You talk a lot. I dunno about 'too much.'"

I stare at him, incredulous. "I just talk _endlessly_ when you're around. It's seriously _just you_. I don't know why. I'm just standing here filling the _silence_ and making _lasagna_. I just, you're so—" I look down at my hands, which are full of cheese, so I can convince myself not to tell him all about how attractive he is. He must know already.

"Stiles…" he says, and I boggle at him. "Do you want me to talk?"

I splutter, "Absolutely. What do you—of _course_ I do. Let's hear your life story, buddy. Get to the chatter. Tell me everything you knew, know, and ever _will_ know."

"I can't if you keep talking like that," he says, smiling. I blush and close my mouth with an audible clang of molars that actually hurts a bit, but I just flinch and stay quiet, and Derek says, "When I was eleven, and my sister Laura was twelve, our brother was supposed to be babysitting us one day while our parents were out of town. But Fred was sixteen and a pissant, so he just shut himself up in his room with his Gamecube and locked the door. So Laura and I left the house and walked to the Walgreens on 10th, and we shoplifted as many Star Wars Pez dispensers as we could fit into her backpack."

He stops talking, then, and I'm left standing and staring at him, not sure whether to nod knowingly or laugh at him. I say, "Did you get caught?"

He shakes his head, shrugs. "Nah. We walked back home and ate them all in one sitting. Then we both threw up and didn't learn a thing."

Then I burst into laughter and can't actually stop for like, ten minutes.

Eventually, I stop laughing, stick the lasagna in the oven, and sit next to him so he can talk. He tells me about how when he was fifteen, he got a part-time job at Sonic Drive-In, but he got fired immediately when someone chucked a drink at him and he keyed their car. He tells me about how he did three years in college, on the east coast, and someone tried to mug him, but he kicked the crap out of him way beyond self-defense and ended up getting arrested for the night. He tells me anecdote after anecdote and I never get sick of them. He lets _me_ talk and doesn't seem to getsick of _me_. He's still there, smudging sauce around his plate with a hunk of bread and hanging out with me, when Dad gets home at six-thirty or so.

Derek looks embarrassed, eyes dropped and face reddening and brow furrowed, and scurries back across the street (I make him take some lasagna home in the container I lent him last time), and I watch him pass under the street lamp and realise that I've got it _bad_ for Derek Hale.

.

And that's the first night I dream about him.

I'm standing around in the grocery store, not even shopping or anything. I'm just— _being_ there, and Derek approaches me, leather jacket with the too-long sleeves and everything. "Why are you here?" he goes.

"Shopping," I yell. "God!"

"Why are you here?" he tries again.

I shrug. He pushes me against the shelves of cereal and attacks my fucking face with his mouth. I jolt awake, the sensation of his hands still burning on my flesh. I'm not even gonna pretend it was super sexy or romantic or something. It was weird as shit, which makes my boner all the more confusing. "What the _fuck_?" I groan.

A cold hand covers my mouth. The thing about covering someone's mouth is that it has one purpose: to get that someone to _not scream_. But it also only ever has one result: it causes that someone to _scream_. Which I definitely do, not gonna lie. It's kind of muffled, but it's a scream. It's not even a yell or a growl or something. _Totally_ a scream.

"Shhh!" someone hisses, and I look, and it's Kate Argent, pressing a forefinger (from the hand that is not pressed against my mouth) to her lips.

"Kmk?" I say.

She takes her hand off. "Shut up."

"Why the _fuck_ are you in my room at—" I look at the clock. "—one o'clock in the goddamn morning?"

"I was concerned," she says.

"Concerned about what? Concerned I wouldn't have a motherfucking _heart attack_ tonight?"

"About your accident." Oh, right. I turn on my lamp. "How'd you—"

"Allison knocked me out of the way." She narrows her eyes, which—whoa—look way darker than they did the last time we were together in the classroom.  "Aaand your eyes are different, again? And I'm gonna have to reiterate, how in all of heavenly, jewel-encrusted _fuck_ are you in my _room_?"

"That's not reiterating, honey," she says. "You asked _why_ before. "

I glower at her. "Kate, it is _past midnight_ , we have had exactly _one and a half conversations_ , and you are in my bedroom _uninvited_. I'm going to tell you this _once_ , and then you're going to _leave_. _Okay_?"

She shrugs casually and sits on the edge of my bed.

"Allison ran up and threw me onto the ground. I didn't see her, and then she was there. It _hurt,_ and she didn't tell me _shit._ "

Kate stares at me quizzically, brow furrowed and whatever, and I can tell that if this was, say, a movie, or a show on MTV, there would be dramatic music playing and the camera would be easing in on her face. But this isn't either of those things (because that would be stupid) so she's just staring at me for no reason and I'm getting exponentially irritated as the moment drags on.

"Let me guess: you know what happened," I say dully. "You know the secret."

Her lips quirk up a bit. "What makes you say that?"

"Look." I drag my hand down my face. It feels like my eyeballs are constructed purely of sand. "I get that you're all cryptic and mysterious. That's great: I love to nurture a sense of adventure and creativity."

She looks irritated, which: join the goddamn _club_ , bitch.  

"But if you could do me a favor and be dramatic and annoying as fuck somewhere _else_ until the _sun's up_ , that'd be great." She starts to protest, so I just go, "Thanks, _Katie_."

Her eye literally twitches. "Fine," she says, voice hard and low. And then she darts off my bed and out my open window, and I lose her in the darkness. I scramble out of bed to shut and lock my window, but I get the feeling that if Kate wanted back into my room again, it'd take more than a cheap, fifteen-year-old window lock to keep her out. It takes me several hours to fall back asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **NEXT WEEK ON _LUNCHTIME_** : I DUNNO GUESS YOU'LL JUST HAVE TO READ A- _HYUCK_


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I read from my list of theories:  
> "1) Allison ended up on earth by accident, but she soon realised her true purpose and dedicated her life to saving inept teenagers from their peers.  
> 2) Allison's adopted sister Kate is a crazed, evil scientist, and one of her many experiments went horribly awry.  
> 3) Stiles is Team Jacob…"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Say it, Allison.  
> Out _loud_.
> 
> And if you guys like Chris Argent, he's here for about forty-five in-story seconds in this chapter! Hoorah!

Even though I feel like I've just transferred to Beacon Hills from the Crypt, I surreptitiously leave some cookies on Derek's porch (they may or may not be heart-shaped; I'm not at liberty to discuss that) and head to school early. Allison is sitting in the library when I find her, looking dutiful, like she's marching to the gallows. She looks like she's taking this way too seriously, so I roll in and immediately say to her, "So I've got some theories."

She blinks at me. "Theories."

"Yeah." I sort of clatter into the seat next to her. "I did a bunch of research yesterday by way of Pixar movies, comic books, and slash fics, and I've compiled a list of ideas." She lets me dig through my backpack to pull it out. I read from it:

"1) Allison ended up on earth by accident, but she soon realised her true purpose and dedicated her life to saving inept teenagers from their peers.

2) Allison's adopted sister Kate is a crazed, evil scientist, and one of her many experiments went horribly awry.

3) Stiles is Team Jacob…"

"Stop," she says, laughing. "Stop forever."

"Frankly, I'm surprised you indulged me this long," I tell her, balling up the paper and chucking it onto the table.

"The truth is… about the same amount of weird," she tells me, "but not one of your guesses is even slightly right." I gesture at her, _by all means_ , and she squirms. "The truth is, I'm a—" She looks devastated. "A vampire."

She whispers that last word, not like it's a secret, but more like it's a swear. I stare at her for a full minute, holding my hands so they don't shake. The clock ticks loudly in the mostly empty library. Then I laugh noisily. "See, I'd _assume_ you were _lying_ to me, but I know what I saw, so…"

She looks at me. "You believe me?"

I huff a grave sigh. "Do I have a choice?" I roll my eyes. "This is stupid. What a stupid plot twist." But it isn't a plot twist if everything's been leading up to it. Has it been, though?

"It really is stupid," she agrees dully, looking as if she's irritated herself to be a vampire in the first place.

The bell rings, and Allison leaves silently, but not without smirking at me and grabbing my crumpled up list of theories.

.

Allison texts me for the rest of the day and the next day. In homeroom, she tells me all of the Argents are vampires, that Gerard Argent sired them all. I text back that Creepy Kate being a vampire isn't a real shocker. Then I follow-up, **No offense.**

In chem, Kate is missing again, and Allison texts that Beacon Hills used to be werewolf territory, but the Argents destroyed them when they moved to town six years ago. I text back, **WEREWOLVES ARE REAL TOO??? THIS IS AWESOME Y/Y** Lydia drops her pencil and I pick it up for her. It's the highlight of my day, really.

Scott has lunch detention, so Allison sits with me and lets me have her lunch. "Some of us live on animal blood," she tells me while I eat, her tone cautious, as if I'll be grossed out or something. I'm not: in fact, I'm ravenous from the excitement. "Others of us get blood from blood banks," she continues. "There are some who survive in the—traditional way—"

"Sucking their blood," I say in a half-assed Transylvanian accent, distracted by the presence of fried chicken.

"Uh—" she laughs awkwardly. "Yes. Listen, Stiles, you—I can't tell if you're serious or not. But I need—I need you to promise you're not going to tell anyone…"

I snort. "Who would I tell? Scratch that—who would I tell that would _believe_ me?"

She shakes her head, shrugs one shoulder, looking morose. "I just—if it got out…" She looks at me.

"No, yeah, I get that. I swear I won't tell, Allison." She still looks uneasy, so I go, "Here: secret for a secret?"

She makes a face.

I cup my hand around my mouth and whisper, "I've got a crush on my hot neighbor."

"Stiles."

"You can't tell _anyone_ , Allison. It'll _ruin_ me." She chucks a fry at me. "So how come you guys got rid of all the werewolves?"

"We're enemies," she shrugs.

 I set down my chocolate milk. "Are they… dangerous, or something?"

Allison rolls her eyes. "If you ask me, they're no more dangerous than we are, but my family begs to differ. And in any case, we didn't get rid of _all_ the werewolves. A few survived."

My eyes pop open. I'm talking to a vampire about werewolves, and I'm not even freaking out, probably because this whole event is incredibly stupid and I'm above it.

That was a lie. I'm not above it in any way, shape, or form. I'm in it. I'm beneath it. I'm so far below it that the earth's core feels like a hat. Okay? This is awesome as fuck and I want to know everything.

"Who are they? Who are the werewolves?"

Allison bites her lip. "I probably shouldn't tell you that."

"Why not?"

"It's not my secret to tell!" She huffs. "Besides, he's already lost enough," she adds softly. She probably thought I wouldn't catch that, but spoilers: I do.

"He? Lost enough?"

"Look, leave it alone," she says. "Kate might be willing to finish him off sometime just for shits and giggles, but I'm not. I didn't want to kill the werewolves. I didn't want to leave him and his sister all alone like that, but they set the fire _anyway_. Then they left for east, but they lured her _back_ , and now _she's_ gone, _too_ , and I don't—"

My mouth pops open. "I have to go."

.

"This is _totally stupid_ ," I say the second Derek opens his door.

Derek does this empty, slack-jawed stare, and it's pretty clear he's half asleep, which is weird because it's fucking _noon_. "What is." And also, his eyes are green, specifically, but they do also contain the entire world within them. Can I just say that? Can we just discuss for a minute the fact that Derek Hale's eyes are _everything_?

I don't have time to be drowning in your eyes, fucker. I demand, "Are you a werewolf?"

He goes white. Then, he returns to normal. "You're right. This _is_ stupid." He grabs my forearm and yanks me into the house, and even though I'm doing that cool stumbling whirl through space, his grip like an impossibly sexy vice on my skin, my hyperactive mind still has time to freak out about how I've never seen the inside of Derek's house before. He slams me against the closed door by the lapels of my coat, and I gasp, mildly offended. "How do you know about this?"

"Allison," I say. "Allison Argent. She totally pulled a Hagrid and spilled without spilling. Put me _down_."

"This is the _stupidest_ —" He pinches the bridge of his nose with a sharp exhalation that sounds like a 'bah!'

"Humbug," I reply, in what I hope is a deadpan that doesn't give away my surprise boner. My deadpan isn't as good as Derek's deadpan. His hand is still hot on my chest, pressing me back, and my backpack is sort of digging into my back, and he's wearing a wifebeater and jeans and he's barefoot and I can't even _be_ here anymore unless he wants me to just come in my pants over _literally_ _nothing_. "Let go," I say as firmly as I can, and he jolts back, looking startled and upset. "God," I huff, smoothing my shirt. Er, shirts. Multiple shirts. I _layer_ , okay. "I can't handle your bad touch while I'm freaking out about the fact that you're a fucking _werewolf_!"

It comes out sounding like an accusation, but Derek just tilts his head like a sexy puppy (whoa, Stiles. _whoa_ ) and repeats, "Bad touch?" like he _doesn't know_ I want to tap that. Like _everyone_ doesn't want to tap that. I snap my fingers a few times in his face.

" _Focus_ , Derek," I bellow, as if of all people, _I_ should be the one saying that. " _Focus_ on the _task_ at _hand_."

" _Fine_ ," he snaps, eyes aflame with suspicion. "Why are you discussing _werewolves_ with _Allison Argent_?"

"She let some shit slip while she was telling me about her _own_ monstrous tendencies, which I gather you already know about."

There's this awkward moment wherein Derek and I both nonverbally acknowledge that the friendship (or whatever it was) we had blooming between us is now going to be irreversibly altered. Before, it was simple. I cooked for him and he displayed his stupidly attractive face for me. We talked and made each other bark laughs that were coated liberally in surprised delight. _Now_ what will we do?

All I can think is that there's a good chance he'll rip my throat out. And howl about it.

I almost do a _cry_ thinking about losing my friendship with Derek. There is seriously a moment where I feel as if I'm standing on crumbling ground, and I have to say goodbye to the solidity of him. But it's fleeting, because I'm nothing if not stupidly and blindly loyal.

I'm _not_ losing Derek; I'm not losing _anyone_. Everything could be real. Ghosts, aliens, daemons, boogiemen, Bigfoot, Canadians— _all_ of it. And I still wouldn't lose _anyone_. Because of my sheer force of will. I drop my backpack and lacrosse stick on the floor, and then I grab Derek and hug him, hard and sudden. He lurches and makes this precious whimper that he tries to turn threatening and manly halfway through—so that it turns into more of a grunt. I hold the hug after I accomplish my task, just because he's warm. He tentatively puts his arms around me back.

"Are you gonna kill me?" I ask calmly, in the same tone I might use to ask if he was hungry. Which, at the risk of a tasteless joke, I'll admit is in a pretty similar vein to the question I _did_ ask.

He does a little, grumbling huff, and grips me tighter. "No, you _moron_."

"Okay, just asking. I just want to be sure. You know."

"You're an idiot."

"Wow, _rude_. Who's been feeding your werewolf ass all week? _I_ think it's been _Stiles_."

"Shut up."

I ignore him. "You're _welcome_. You totally owe me and I demand that you divulge _all_ werewolf-related information as payment."

"Fine."

Oh, and by the way, we're still hugging. I feel like once a hug surpasses thirty seconds, you're not hugging anymore. You're holding each other. And I am so on board with me and Derek holding each other it's not even a joke. Awkward as it is, I'm not gonna be the one to break it. It's _nice_ , okay.

And that's how it happens that we end up slumped on the floor of Derek's entryway together. There is snuggling and dozing and no divulging of werewolf-related information at all.

.

So Scott needs to buy a suit.

Allison is going to be wearing a purple dress to the dance, as Scott keeps repeating numbly, and Scott has been charged with the task of dressing in such a way as to complement her. This is to be Scott's purpose in life: be Allison's complement. I tell this to him.

"Do I not do that enough?" he asks, eyes going wide. His concern is palpable, and adorable. His concern is adorpable. He pulls out his phone, and I watch over his shoulder as he types, **ur smart.**

"Com _ple_ ment, as in _enhance_ ," I tell him calmly. "Not com _pli_ ment."

"Is there a difference?" he asks, eyes going wide. His confusion is palpable, and we're not going through this again.

 **thanks. :O you're cute.** pops up on his screen and he beams at me, the conversation already forgotten. She doesn't even question Scott's abrupt admiration of her intelligence, and I can't tell if he _overestimated_ aforementioned intelligence, or if she's just already _used to his shit_.

"Well, where can we get you a nice suit?" I ask Scott, because he knows the area better than I do, and because I'd better go with him, lest he forgets what he's there for and buys a katana instead. I _love_ this guy, but he doesn't know which way's _up_ sometimes.

"There isn't really anyplace in town that'll do," Scott says, "but I guess we could head down to Roseville. It's a little bigger. Probably has a mall or whatever."

Scott is correct in his assumption that Roseville has a mall or whatever.  We head down there that weekend, and spend a few hours struggling with suit-buying. Scott pays for it, and then pretzels, with the credit card his mom handed him. Can we just have a moment of silence for how great pretzels are? And how wonderful Scott is for buying me one? You may do some _ohms_.

And we're back. Scott and I spend a while in the arcade, where he says he liked Windwaker better than Ocarina of Time, and we have to argue about it. (I win.) Then I have to admit that I didn't like Mario 64, and he shames me. Scott's and my relationship is one of give-and-take. We are bro-soulmates. We are broulmates.

We get more food, from the food court; I make Scott buy me pizza bread because we can, but I buy him a funnelcake because I like his face. Then we leave the mall and run into Allison, Victoria, Lydia, and some bitch called Lauren, all of whom are dress shopping.

Because Victoria (and by extension, some bitch called Lauren) hates my guts, Lydia is on the phone, and Scott and Allison are staring deeply into each other's eyes and travelling mental-emotionally to a faraway land where it is raining cupcakes and photographs of Scott and Allison together, I announce to the negative four people who are listening that I'm going to find a bathroom. I do that in a small bookstore nearby, and then, figuring they won't miss me for a bit, I look at books. They don't have any on vampirism that isn't some kind of romance novel for teenagers and sad, middle-aged women, but there are some informative books on lycanthropy. I pore over them and wonder if they're accurate in any way, or if Derek would be pissed off about them.

Next time I glance at my watch, I realise it's been almost an hour, so I race outside and promptly get lost trying to find everyone again—not that anyone noticed I was gone and tried to contact me. I call Scott, who does not answer, and then my phone dies, as if on cue.

Basically, everything goes right for Stiles and he is forever a happy camper.

One time, Mom and I forgot where we stuck her car in a parking garage at the airport, and we spent two and a half hours trekking through the many levels, traversing the expanse of the labyrinth of cars, suitcases in tow. It was so exhausting that I dreamt about it that night, endless rows of bumpers to cars that were not ours. That is what this reminds me of, and I have no idea how long it's been when I run into Kate and Chris Argent.

"Lost, cutie?" asks Kate, and while I appreciate someone finally admitting that I am, in fact, a cutie, Creepy Kate cornering me behind a Bed, Bath and Beyond isn't exactly something that I want out of life.

"Nope," I respond jauntily. "Just out for a stroll."

"Ask him what he knows," Chris says to Kate.

Kate rolls her eyes. "He can hear you, Chris. Humans have ears, too. Or did you forget?" He glares at her. She addresses me, shoulders slumping. "What do you know?" she asks dully.

"A lot of things," I say scornfully. "At the top of the list is 'murder is wrong' and 'fire is painful.'"

Chris and Kate sprout mirrored expressions of violent intent, and they step slowly toward me. My heart starts to hammer in my chest, and it dawns on me that I probably shouldn't sass vampires with incriminating information on them that they don't want me to know. I'm about to bolt when a black Camaro _literally bowls them over_.

"Holy _shit_ ," I scream. "Okay! Wow! Okay, holy shit! Okay! Wow!"

"Shut up and get in," yells Derek from the driver's seat, while Kate and Chris swear beneath the tires.

"Holy shit. Okay," I say as I fall mostly head-first into the car. The car thuds as it drives back over them like speed bumps and takes us onto the road. I stare, mouth and eyes wide open, at Derek, who glares over the steering wheel like the windshield ate the last piece of pizza or something, and holy _shit_. Wow. Okay. "Holy shit. Wow. Okay."

"No, just keep that up," snaps Derek. "Don't say anything helpful or anything."

My mouth opens and closes once or twice, and then I yell, "What in the _fuck_ could possibly be helpful right now?"

"You can start with how you ended up trapped in an alleyway and surrounded by _literal bloodthirsty murderers_ ," he growls. He _growls_. And his eyes flash and my heart and my stomach switch places for a second. Then I get pissed.

" _No_ ," I grit out. "No, you do not get to interrogate me on how the human _let himself_ be attacked by supernatural beings that want him _dead_. _How did you find me_?"

"I was following you," Derek says, shameless under his aggravation. "I lost you for a bit while you wandered hopelessly in the wrong direction, but I found you again, just in time to basically declare war on the people who killed my entire fucking family."

"Wow. Holy shit, because I _hate_ them. I _hate_ them, Derek," I holler, and I'm only half surprised by my own vehemence.

It seems to placate Derek, because he growls again, and then says, "Put on your goddamn seatbelt."

.

We are parked under a couple of big-ass palm trees in front of the Italian restaurant where I last saw my friends. The sun is setting, so the car is dim, but I can still see the shape of Derek hunched over the steering wheel and wigging out. He's doing it subtly, but seeing as I'm paying exclusive attention to him, I notice anyway.

"I've got a lot of questions," I say, sounding much more relaxed than I feel.

He cranks his head over to look at me. It looks like he wants to say something, but can't, for whatever reason. Maybe he _can't_ talk, like he's a _baby_ again. Maybe he doesn't _know_ what to say. Maybe he doesn't speak _English_ anymore. Maybe he's _mad_ at me. Maybe he's _scared_ of me. Maybe he's just too _cute_ to speak. He's still freaking out, though, and he sort of twitches when I say his name.

"Derek, you need to do a normal human thing now," I tell him firmly. "Let's go eat."

"Your friends," he says gruffly. His eyes glint eerily in the headlights of a passing car, and I remember suddenly that he's definitely a werewolf; maybe he's losing to his baser instincts right now.

I put a hand on his arm and he visibly relaxes with an exhale; it's really endearing. "Fuck 'em," I say in a soothing voice. "Fuck 'em with a chainsaw."

And that's how we end up inside the Italian restaurant, the waitress unignorably hitting on Derek and shooting passive-aggressive glances at me, which: be jealous, bitch. I make Derek order food and drink all his water, and soon he starts reinflating and acting like a relatively normal person again. When my pesto tortellini and his spaghetti and meatballs get to the table, I'm fucking _ready_.

"So, _werewolves_ ," I say around an overlarge mouthful of bread. "They bite, right? I mean, that's how you make _more_ of them?"

He looks up at me, looking terribly guilty and really pleased and super angry. "Only alphas can give the bite," he says carefully. "Betas and omegas'll just kill you if they try to do it."

I smirk. "Okay. You an alpha?"

He nods sadly. "Laura _was_ the alpha, but…"

We're quiet for a moment, and then I divert from his sister. "And you, what, turn into a wolf every full moon?"

"Not really. It's complicated." He shrugs one shoulder. "I'm pretty in control of it. Since I was born a werewolf."

"That's _awesome_ ," I shoot out excitedly before I can stop myself. Our section of the restaurant goes a little quiet, and people peek over their menus at me, and I feel my ears burn. I drop my voice and instinctively hunch over when I do so. "I didn't know you could do that. Be born a werewolf."

"Apparently you can," he says drily.

"That's cool. You're so cool."

"I'm cool for being born."

"You'd be cool even if you'd never been born. So, uh—why were you following me?" I actually set down my fork and squint at him, because following me around all day? Is really weird, okay.

"You're giving me whiplash with the sudden subject changes, Stiles," he says.

"Answer the question, Lupin."

He frowns at the table. "I was… worried."

"You were worried. Worried about what, worried I'd fall in the gutter or something?"

He glares violently at his mostly untouched plate and lets out a livid huff that sounds almost like a snort. You know, like a bull. "The Argents have set a precedent for killing people I really care about," Derek says angrily. "And I ended up being _correct_ , by the way, so don't even…"

He trails off when he looks at me and I'm peering at him with huge eyes. I watch the blush creep up in his face, his eyes flick away nervously. I have to actually put forth an effort not to get all weepy on him; this seems to be a recurring theme of my times with Derek. "That is the sweetest thing anyone who isn't a parent of mine has ever said to me," I say measuredly. "And you didn't even _say_ it. You just _implied_ it."

"Well, I—with the—okay," he says almost inaudibly.

I lean up on my elbows and stare at Derek's stupidly adorable face. "If someone'd come up to me a year ago, and been like, 'Stiles, in one year you will be sitting in an Italian restaurant in Roseville, getting pitter-pats over a werewolf,' I would have assumed I'd OD'd on Adderall or something."

"You're getting pitter-pats over me?" he says faintly, failing to glower over a pleased smile.

"I am getting a _lot_ of bodily responses over you," I reply. "Let me tell _you_."

.

"How come werewolves and vampires hate each other?" I ask as I play with the radio in Derek's fancy car. He has more buttons in this thing than they've got in the fucking space shuttle. We're parked in front of his house, and we've been in here for like twenty minutes, but it's nice, just like the weird hug we did the other day, so like then, if one of us is going to break it, it's not gonna be me. "Wait, hang on, let me revise that based on what I've witnessed: how come vampires irrationally hate werewolves?"

" _There_ you go," Derek says wryly, looking about seventy times more comfortable than he did in the restaurant. He lifts one shoulder, and then drops it like it was a chore. "The only coven my family's crossed paths with is the Argents, and they hated us on _contact_ , so I don't really know what to tell you."

"And now they'll want you dead."

"They've always wanted me dead." He twists his mouth a little, frowns, like he bit a lemon or something and it turns out he's allergic. "They want you dead, now, too."

"Well, they probably didn't like you driving on them to rescue me."

"They have no sense of humor," Derek deadpans, and when I laugh, I realize how close we are. I'm actively leaning towards him, closing the tiny distance between us. I didn't even notice; it's like I'm _drawn_ to him, which is a stupid thought. We’re _magnets_. I try to distract myself with another question.

"How were you following me without my noticing?" I ask. "Were you just tailing me or something? I like to think I'd have noticed your fucking sports car rolling around behind me."

He squirms. "I, uh. I followed your scent."

"My what."

"Your _scent_?" He clears his throat. "It's… I just… I _know_ it, so I just…"

So much for distracting myself. We blink at each other for a bit, and then I sigh.

"This is so dumb," I say, and then I kiss him, fingertips brushing at his jaw. 

He falls into it immediately, like he was _waiting_ for it, which— _he's_ a super hot 20-year-old with a leather jacket and a Camaro, and _I'm_ an awkward 16-year-old with a plaid button-down and a scratched Jeep, so I don't really get why he'd be _waiting_ for that unless he—he grabs my waist and maneuvers me into his lap with unsurprisingly little effort.

"Holy crouton christ," I whisper, mostly to myself, when he starts going at my neck. The steering wheel is jammed into the small of my back, and my head is bent weird because of the roof, but, like, who fucking _cares_? I fist my hands in his jacket and try not to sound too virginal while he sucks this gross and delicious hickey into my skin, right on my collarbone. I let him do that for a while, and then I grab his hair—it's _really soft_ , by the way, in case you were wondering—and drag him back up to kiss me again, his stupid, rebel-without-a-cause-esque stubble scraping on me, which is way hot when I'm really into it like this. He runs his tongue along my lips, which I always thought sounded gross when I read it in fanfiction (not that I read fanfiction, _what_ ), but when Derek does it to me it _kinda sorta_ makes me want to be doing a _sex_ on him. It makes me picture us together, imagine us in _bed_. While he shifts his palms up my t-shirt and onto my ribs, and I rock our hips together (fucking hell), I wonder idly if we'd have _time_ to sex, which reminds me that it's late and I've been incommunicado for about two hours, maybe three? I don't know.

"Hmm," I groan against Derek's lips, "my dad's gonna start wondering where I am soon."

He makes this dumb, stubborn, growly noise that I can't help but be charmed by, but it doesn't make me any less sixteen, my phone any less dead, or my curfew any less gone, so I nip at his lower lip and then crawl over the console and flop into the passenger seat gracelessly. Not that I can find it in me to care even _slightly_ how graceful I am right now. "G'night, Derek," I say dreamily, popping the door open.

He just stares at me, looking totally debauched. Like, his lip's swelling, and his eyes are heavy-lidded and dilated, and his hands are sort of hovering where I was just a second ago, and he's staring at me and slightly out of it, and _I did that_. I grin at him, preening just a little. Then I climb out, shut the door, and trot across the street to get worried at by my dad.

.

On Sunday I wake up to Allison shaking me roughly. I crack my eyes open and seriously? _Seriously_? I say this. " _Seriously_? I was just about to get _laid_ in my dream, Allison, and I'm _totally shameless_ about that because it was a _great dream_ and what are you _doing_ here."

"What the fuck do you _think_ I'm doing here?" she says through grit teeth.

I lay my bleariest, most disgruntled look on her. "Does it have anything to do with _Katie and Chrissie_ trying to _kill me_ yesterday?"

She looks offended. "This is _serious_ , Stiles."

I shoot bolt upright in bed, not even caring that I'm not wearing a shirt and there's a girl in my room. "Thanks for letting me _know_ , Allison. This is my _life_ now, Allison. I'm threatened by _vampires_ , and I'm having sexy dreams about a _werewolf_. Everything's gone so surreal that I can't even take it _seriously_ right now, Allison. My best friend's vampire girlfriend is in my room, lecturing me about what is and isn't _serious_ , Allison. I was just about to get _dream-laid_ , Allison."

"I know," she says grimly. "You talk in your sleep."

And, well, I'm not surprised by that.

.

Allison lets me shower and get dressed before she tries to talk to me about vampire shit again.

"You didn't say the neighbor you had a crush on was Derek _Hale_ ," she says sharply while I mix pancake goop with this stupid, airy half-smile on my face. Yell at _her_ , okay, _she's_ the one who brought him _up_.

I sort of hum affirmatively, and on a whim, chuck M&Ms into the batter. Dad'll like that.

"You also didn't say he liked you _back_." She prods at the livid mark on my collarbone, and I slap her hand away and haul my shirt up over it. She did sound mildly impressed, at least, so I sort of smirk at the bowl of batter. 

"Well, neither did he, until last night. When he had to _save me_ from being murdered by your _crazed family_." I pour a tiny, vaguely pancake-shaped blob onto the hot griddle and it shushes me. _Fuck_ you, pancake. Dad's in the _shower_ ; I'll speak at whatever volume I _want_. "Which: you need to _do_ something about that," I say, pointing at her with the spatula.

"Stiles, I can't do _anything_ about that," she says, crossing her arms. "You found out about us—which everyone but me was _against_ , by the way—and then _immediatel_ y started _necking_ with our _one remaining enemy_ in Beacon Hills." She tosses her hands up. "I don't really know what you were expecting to come _out_ of that."

"So, okay. So it's sort of _suspicious_ ," I consent. "But it isn't like _Derek_ has shown a distinct pattern of attacking _Argents_. It's sort of the other way around, isn't it?" I flip the pancake over. Perfect.

" _What_ distinct pattern?" Allison snaps, defensive. "It was _one fire_."

"One fire that killed eleven people. _And_ Laura," I say sternly. " _And_ his uncle's a vegetable. There are _multiple_ data entries."

"That's not the point," she deflects, and I pantomime strangling her, but her back is turned. "The _point_ is you need to stop seeing Derek. Now."  

"Stop _seeing_ him? What're you, my socially oppressive _grandmother_? Get the hell out."

"I'm not joking, Stiles."

"I'm not _laughing, Allison_."

We glare at each other for a few moments, her unspoken threats versus my willpower. Her blood feud against my loyalty. After a bit, she blinks and looks away.

"Fine," she says dismissively. "You've made your decision. You've made your bed; now lie in it, with your _werewolf boyfriend_."

I begin, "He's not my—" but he turns and heads out the back door. I dart after her and shout, "Thought you were _against_ this stupid vendetta," but she ignores me.

I seethe in the doorway for a second. Then I remember the pancake and race back to the stove with a swear. I scoop it onto a plate. It's been burnt completely black.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all ever had M&M pancakes? Neither have I. But I understand they are delightful, if that's quite your cup of sugar. 
> 
> **BONUS:**  
>  _breakfast puns for which i will_ never _apologise_  
>  **me:** from now on, beacon hills is bacon hills  
>  **liz:** I EGGPROVE OF THIS DECISION ugh that makes no fucking sense  
>  **me:** i'm sensing omelet of self-hate in that comment  
>  **liz:** i can't believe i missed the obvious TEEN WAFFLE joke ugh i fail at life  
>  **me:** TEEN WAFFLE: a show about a teen named syrup mcdonalds living in bacon hills who gets the Bite from peanut whole (milk) and enlists his best friend cereal to help him avoid hurting his girlfriend apple juice  
>  **alex:** a mysterious lone wolf named danish shows up, though it’s unknown if he’ll help syrup or not  
>  **me:** ceranish is the prevailing ship of teen waffle. meanwhile, danish is creating more waffles: he gave the Bite to eggica, igrits, and bagel. he also bit snackson, but snackson collapsed in the oven


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> That would be stupid. It would be _stupid_ , and _cliché_ , and frankly I don't have time to be falling in love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note addition of 'a fire' to the tags. Now there is a fire.

I see the fire when I get home from lacrosse practice. It's mostly dark out, and there's this raging, orange inferno, reflecting eerily off the overcast clouds and the black smoke, so much smoke. It makes for this oppressive ceiling, turning the horror back on itself. Like a fear feedback loop. The fire is all over the house across the street from mine. Derek's house. I'm consumed with terror immediately and I throw the Jeep in park and stumble out without cutting the engine.

"Derek," I call, my voice giving away my sheer panic. "Holy shit, Derek, are you here?"

There's a crash inside that makes me gasp and then wheeze from the smoke—some part of the architecture falling inside, followed by a burst of flame and thick billows of smoke out a window—and inside, someone chokes out a swear.

I stagger towards the house, frantic. Then I double back, throw the back hatch open on my Jeep. Pull out a fire extinguisher, which—the house is being _devoured_ by flames. But Derek is in there.

I kick the front door and it falls open, the lock already broken. Derek is amidst the flames, in his stupid leather jacket, arm up over his nose, looking out of his element—get it? Because fire is an element. Not funny. "Derek," I call, my eyes welling with tears, from the smoke and nothing else. "What the fuck are you—"

He points at the floor. It takes me a moment to spot the line of black dirt at his feet. He lifts a foot, and then puts it back. Points again, frenzied, and I get it. He can't cross that. I open my mouth to ask what the hell it is, but I can't talk. He points again, at the door. He's coughing. He wants me to go. _Fuck_ that. Fuck him _and_ his random black shit; I point the extinguisher at the black shit, spray white foam, and a minute later, Derek is barreling into me, dragging me backwards out the door.

We get to the street, and then he sags against me, hacking up a lung.  

I scramble for my phone, in the pocket of my hoodie, and have trouble managing 9-1-1 on the keypad, and it takes me a few moments to realise it's because my hands are shaking violently.

.

"What was that stuff," I ask Derek hoarsely. It's the wee hours, and we're in my room, huddled up together on my bed, knowing we aren't safe.

Because we aren't. They went for Derek's house, took it. Took it while he was inside, _vulnerable_. If Derek hadn't made a statement by saving me from Kate and Chris, they wouldn't have _done_ this. If I hadn't known about the Argents, they wouldn't have _cornered_ me, requiring Derek's intervention. If I hadn't been in the wrong place at the wrong time, I never would have found _out_ about the Argents. If I hadn't moved to Beacon Hills, I wouldn't have _been_ there. If I had just taken better care of my mom—I rub my knuckles into my eyes until I see stars.

"Rowan," Derek replies. "It's—mountain ash, we. Can't cross it."

"You," I say, but my voice doesn't quite come out, so I clear my throat and begin again. "You need to tell me all the shit you can't cross."

Under the blanket, he slides his hand over mine.

"I'm sorry," I say. I direct my gaze at him, stare. He looks tired, bone tired, but wide awake, and his eyes glow faintly in the pitch darkness of my room.

" _None_ of this is your fault," he says firmly.

I sigh at him. "I'm not a _werewolf_. Using your _alpha tone_ won't make me agree with you." My voice cracks desperately, breaking because it's so thin.

His eyes narrow, lupine.

"When—" I clear my throat again, trying to restore some semblance of calm, if not genuinely then for Derek's benefit. "When I saw the fire, I thought they'd _gotten_ you." Under my eyelids, I can still see the flickering light. "Thought I'd _lost_ you." My throat, my chest aches from coughing, wheezing. From the panic attack I had after the emergency vehicles got there.

Derek and I both showered. He needed it more than I did, more legitimately than I did, but I felt _filthy_. I scrubbed vigorously, scraping away the night, washing away everything I could. But I can still smell the smoke, melted, ruined plastic, destroyed wood. I close my eyes, and there's the fucking fire, I hear the sounds. "I don't think I could take that," I tell Derek in a whisper. "Losing you. Especially that way."

I open my eyes, temporarily putting out the fire. Turn, peer at him. He's looking at me, shadowed eyes dim, but alight, in a way that hits me hard, the realisation that I'm probably in love with him. I don't say it, though, because I'm sixteen and it's just the fact that he almost died several hours ago. We're both so fragile, and not just right now. The Argents are a force to be reckoned with. "Derek. What are we going to do?"

"What. Right now? Or with the Argents?"

I huff a small sigh that under less grievous circumstances might have been a laugh. "Both."

"I don't know what to do about them," he says, eyes trained on me.

"Okay," I say, licking my lips. My heart pounds like it's expanding. We're magnets again. "Wha… What about right now, then?"

He seems to know the answer to that. He cups my jaw, fingers coarse and hot, and his eyes, they're staring into me and _seeing_ me. He kisses me—or maybe I kiss him—we kiss _each other_. There is _kissing_. An abundance of kissing. Slow, overwhelmingly _fervent_ kissing. And then we do this crazy thing where we sort of make love. Only _not_ , because we're not in _love_! I shouldn't have used that phrase because we're _not_. Seriously.

If we _were_ in love, which we're _not_ , it would be quiet and amazing, and I'd press him against my bed and cover him up like I could protect him—hypo _the_ tically, because we _aren't_ in love and this _didn't happen_. As much as I think about sex, like, _all the time_ , it wouldn't be about his naked skin or his hands on my dick or the way his eyes look in the dark—it would be about _desperation_ , terror that I would never _see_ him again, that I'd wake up and he'd be _gone_ , that if I didn't feel his fingernails digging into my back, it wouldn't be _real_ , and the Argents would take him and I'd lose my _mind_. Not that I love him. 

I'm still a month away from being seventeen, which means I'm just a _stupid kid_. What do _I_ know about love? Nothing. So that's why we don't stay pressed together in my bed, clinging hard to each other, fighting the urge to sleep. That's why we don't do that.

And that's why when he wakes in the night from some nightmare he can't—or won't—put into words, I wouldn't be there to offer silent support or distract him, and it wouldn't dawn on me at four in the morning with some flash of world-rending recognition what he means to me, because we're not together, and we're not in love. Not even a little.

That would be stupid. It would be _stupid_ , and _cliché_ , and _frankly_ I don't have _time_ to be falling in love. I've got people to protect, okay, including myself. Can—can we all just address the fact that it's totally irresponsible to spend the night losing my virginity and having a bunch of emo feelings or whatever, when, like, a murder of vampires just burned down my neighbor's house, because what's stopping them from burning down mine, with _me in it_? I mean, Dad—Dad's at the station, but he won't be _forever_ , and Derek doesn't have anyplace else to _go_. Neither do I.

 _And_ , it's downright _mor_ tifying! So _no_. We definitely _don't_ do that, and we _don't_ spend the night together, our limbs all twisted up together and his head on my chest, and I absolutely do _not_ make him promise to be stay.

Because it's idiotic. And frivolous. And embarrassing.

And because we're _not in love_.

.

"Why do you want to go to Allison's house?" asks Scott suspiciously—and belatedly, might I add, because we've been in the Jeep for like five, ten minutes by the time it occurs to him to wonder why he's giving me directions to the Argent house. "And why are you wearing a _scarf_?"

"Are you objecting to my personal style changes, Scott?" I flip my scarf over my shoulder, which gives him no choice but to shrug and smirk at me. "I just had to ask her something."

"Take a left here," he says, and I do. "What're you gonna ask her?"

I press my lips together in a thin line while I drive, frowning. I wonder if Scott will be targeted as well for being friends with me. Or if they'll forbid him from talking to me. "How much do you know about Allison?" I ask carefully.

"What do you mean?" He quirks his lips up on one side and furrows his brows, and yeah, that's a pretty weird question, I guess.

"I mean, does she ever talk about her family and whatever?"

"Yeah," Scott says. "She actually told me something crazy at Danny's party last week."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah, you know your neighbor across the street? The guy whose house caught fire last night? Dirk Hale?"

I'm pretty sure I full-body twitch when he says that, like he zapped me with a tiny taser. "Derek."

"Yeah, him. I guess back before the Argents, _lived_ in Beacon Hills, back when they only came to visit their family here, Allison's sister Kate dated him for a summer, back when he went to Beacon Hills High, too." I slam on the brakes, making Scott lurch forward against his seatbelt and swear impressively. " _Stiles_!"

"Sorry!" I yelp, glancing in the mirrors to make sure no one was behind me—like there _would_ be, out in the forest like this, but better make sure, I guess—and sort of fluttering, flailing. I'm _smooth_ , okay. "Sorry, you just—" I gulp, frown at his bewildered face. "He's… he's like three or four years older than us."

Scott's face dawns, and then dusks. "So when he was in high school she would have been…"

I feel myself make a Stiles face. "Sounds fishy, dude." So _Scott_ doesn't know _shit_. Either that, or he's a fantastic actor, a secret genius. It's probably, uh—relevant to his interests that he's trying to get it with a _vampire_. I mean, I can't even imagine doing it Derek without knowing what he was. It's _prudent information_ , okay, and I like to think that he wouldn't be willing to go anywhere with me unless I knew the truth. Right? Right.

Also, can we just throw the metaphorical car in reverse for a sec? Because _Kate_ and _Derek_? I mean, Kate is perpetually sixteen, so _that's_ not the problem, but _wow_ , no one mentioned that to me. On the one hand, Derek's exes aren't necessarily my business, but on the other hand I'm the jealous type, and also _Kate Argent_. Like, in light of recent events, you'd think he would have _shared_ that with me. And on a third hand that I grew after falling into a vat of radioactive goo, I wonder if this _led_ to the Hale house fire.

The _first_ one.

Christ.

I quickly hammer out a text to him.

"Who are you texting?" Scott asks, mildly irritated. "Drive again. You're in the road."

"You can't control me," I say, depositing my phone in my lap. "I'm a rebel, Scott. I'm thinking about going _goth_ , too." I glance at him, squinting. "Thinking about drinking _blood_ or something."

There is still no reaction out of Scott, and speaking of Scott knowing things, I figure now is as good a time as ever to test his acceptance of me. 

Voice cracking, "So, uh, about my neighbor Dirk Hale…" He's looking at me expectantly, this weird crease between his eyebrows. "Um, I kind of—have a thing? With him?"

"A thing."

"Um. Yeah, we're. I guess you could say—going out?" Like, once. He's probably not planning on "going out" much after this. 

"Oh!" he unleashes, long and drawn out. He points at me like he's just located me in a Where's Waldo book. "You have a _thing_ with him!" I nod at him grimly, and then he frowns. "You must've been pretty worried about the fire last night, then."

"You have no idea," I say sort of weakly, scrubbing a hand across my forehead. "So, you're—okay with that? With me and Derek?"

"Well… I mean, he's a little older than you are," Scott comments. I wasn't expecting him to stone me for _lying with man_ or whatever, but I'm still blankly surprised that it doesn't seem to have occurred to him to react to this revelation about me. I once told my friend in middle school that I'd kiss him if he asked me to, and he stopped talking to me. Big loss, frankly. Scott asks, "You like him, don't you?"

"Uh, well—yeah. Um... Yes."

"You _love_ him," he says, realizing, and I feel my ears burning red. I neither confirm or deny. It would ruin the moment to be all like, _no, It's just sex with feelings_. "Well," Scott decides, "that's good enough for _me_." And this is why I love you, Scott. He says this shit matter-of-factly, like it doesn't redefine how I look at shit, like this isn't the first time I've felt like this about anyone (barring Lydia Martin, who is a goddess). "Maybe you guys could double with me and Allison?"

I fight an urge to laugh in his actual face. I get that he's trying to be supportive, but aside from the fact that Allison Argent is Allison Argent, there's nothing about Derek that I could take on a high school double date. I'm well aware of the implications of that. Derek's probably _freaking the fuck out_ right now, and not just because of the attempted murder. "Uh, I don't think that's such a good idea," I tells Scott as tactfully as I can manage, but he _has_ reminded me that I've got business. "You're sure it's just Allison there?" I ask as I ease the Jeep forward again, gently to make up for the way I braked earlier.

"Yeah." He looks up from his phone, smirks at me. "I should probably tell her I'm taking you there."

" _Don't_." He looks at me funny. At least I didn't slam on the brakes again. "It's, uh, a surprise."

Scott watches me, sidelong, but doesn't protest. He's easy to please. He shoves his phone in the general direction of his pocket, but misses and it clatters onto the floor of my Jeep.

My phone buzzes, and I glance at the new text.

**tell you later.**

_Fuck_.

.

So Allison doesn't look surprised when we pull up; she just sucks her teeth and looks grim. And it's probably because she heard us coming. Literally, with superpowers or whatever. She may, it occurs to me belatedly, have heard my confession to Scott in the car. Not that she didn't know about my inclinations already.

"Cute scarf," Allison says when she lets us into her house, and she leers at me knowingly and I should _really_ just stake her right now.

Instead, I thank her. "Man, that's a nice table," I say, tracing a finger along the polished surface of a table in the gigantic entryway. "Wouldn't it be awesome if I just, like, grabbed a hunk of it and accidentally stabbed someone with it?"

Scott splutters a confused and mildly embarrassed laugh. "Stiles! Stiles, you're saying things."

Allison and I stare holes in each other's eyes, and for like a minute we don't break eye contact; Scott slowly starts to notice the tension, and I can see him fluttering about in my peripheral, hovering, heading back and forth between me and her. Eventually he settles directly between us, and sort of goes, "Guys?"

Allison finally speaks. "What is it that you needed? I have plans." She still doesn't look away from me.

"Oh, yeah?" Scott's voice is up, like, an octave and a half. "What kind of plans?"

Finally, Allison looks away, and I shut my eyes and feel the fucking burn. "I'm hanging out with Lydia," she says to him. She plucks a spec of lint off his chest, and he grins at her, twisted up with affection. Girl, I know that feel.

"Lydia's hot," I say suddenly, and while Scott, to his credit (or detriment) doesn't even react, Allison twists her head around like Medusa and squints at me. "Like _fire_ ," I add.

" _Well_ , you'd better go," Allison says abruptly.

I'm done playing, though. "You need to _tell_ him, Allison. You need to tell him or _I_ will."

"I don't know what you're talking about, Stiles."

"The _hell_ you don't. I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, until last night."

"Seems like last night went pretty well for you."

I flinch like I've been slapped. " _Allison_."

It's pretty clear on her face that she regrets saying that, but she doesn't look any less determined to keep Scott in the dark. Meanwhile, Scott is peering back and forth between us. "You guys… Can someone explain what's going _on_ here, please?"

.

Scott freaks out. At first he doesn't believe us, until Allison pulls out these fangs in her mouth, actual fangs—she didn't even show me the fangs, but there they are, pointy and _real_. But then Scott freaks out. He gets angry, kicks the table I threatened Allison with earlier, knocking a leg off and breaking the vase that was on it. Then, abruptly, he charges out the door and into the woods.

"Scott!" Allison calls after him, dashing halfheartedly into the drive. Then she comes back and stands in front of me. We worry about him, mutually silent, for a bit; and then, she rounds on me. "This is _your fault_ ," she says gutturally, like she's wrenching the words from deep in her chest. " _You_ did this. He never would have had to _know_ —"

"You do _not_ get to be pissed off at me about this," I shout. "He had a right to know he was dating a member of the legion of the _undead_ , okay. And don't even _talk_ to me about ruining your relationship with him, because at least I didn't try to _kill_ him with _fire_."

She stares at me, tears running down her face. Apparently vampires can _cry_. You'd think perhaps not, since they're _dead_ and everything, but there she is, going to town.  I absolutely do _not_ get tears in my eyes, as well. I just _don't_. (I guess you can see through my lies by now, especially after last night. I'm a terrible liar, really.)

"Derek isn't going to attack you guys," I tell her.

"What."

"Derek! He poses no threat to you!" She gives a great sniff, all wet and nasty. Stares at me like I'm talking about pizza at a funeral. "Call your family off," I say, exasperated.

"Coming to my house uninvited and making my boyfriend dump me is a really terrible tactic for begging for mercy," she snaps, teeth grit.

"Okay, _first_ of all," I sigh, digging in one of the pockets on the inside of my jacket, "I didn't _make him dump you_. He's his own man. Second of all, he's not even, like," wrong pocket. I switch sides, "technically your _boyfriend_ yet? All right? And third, you know, while we're talking about bad tactics, burning down my hot neighbor's house with him in it is a really fuckin' weird thing to do if you don't want a swift and immediate house call from me." I finally locate a travel pack of Kleenex, pull one out, and offer it to her.

Her eyes dart between me and the tissue like it's giving her the bird, and then she snatches it out of my hands. Blows her nose noisily into it. "Honestly?" she says, voice dull from congestion. "I was against the fire. So was Chris. We were outvoted."

"Chris voted nay on the fire?" I repeat incredulously. " _Chris_ did?"

She shrugs. "He wasn't happy about the _car accident_ ," she says, raising an eyebrow, and I avert my gaze, "but he survived. Kate's _always_ hated Derek." I want to ask about that, but Allison goes on too quickly. "Right now the others think the wolf is dead. That impression won't last long. But you probably have a few days. A week if he doesn't go out much."

"Okay," I say grudgingly. "How can I fix this permanently?"

"I don't know," Allison says. "I don't know," she snaps. "I don't know," she says softly. "Is Scott gonna be okay?"

"Depends," I respond. "Anyone we know gonna find him appetizing?"

She gives me a dirty look, and I shrug. "My family knows not to touch him," she says sharply. " _You_ , on the other hand."

We squint at each other for a moment, and then I get in my Jeep and start to drive home.

.

I see Scott trudging down the dirt road. Pull up next to him. He looks at me, watches me chew my lip for a bit. Then he gets in, folds his arms. I want to nag at him to put on his seatbelt, but it's a little tense for that right now.

We drive in silence for a few minutes.

"Scott," I say.

"I don't want to talk about it," he says, voice wobbling.

"Dude, we've only known each other like a month," I say, "and I don't wanna overstep any boundaries here. But you're, like, already one of the best friends I've ever had." His eyes flick towards me, but jump right back to his lap. "But we'll get through this together." I pause. "Unless you don't want me around, in which case, I have literally no idea who else I'm going to hang out with on my birthday next week."

There's a long lull, and then Scott says, "Danny would go."

"Danny would go out of pity," I declare. "You, you'd go for the cake, at least."

Scott grins at me. It fades momentarily. "You knew before I did."

"It's complicated," I tell him.

Scott looks at me. I've never by any means thought he was _stupid_ , but I had considered him kind of simple, in a sweet way. There's something deadly serious in his eyes, right now, that makes me reassess his typically cheery attitude: not simpleness, but optimism. That optimism is dulled, now, and I fret that it's irrevocable. "Can you uncomplicate it?" he asks.

"Uh, I can _try_. The situation—Scotty, it's _inherently_ —" He's staring at me, nary a change in expression. He means tell him. Everything. I chew on my lip. "Yeah," I decide. Derek's not gonna be happy about it.

"When."

"I'll take you to lunch," I say. "Tell you there."

Scott accepts this. We drive in comfortable, amicable quiet for a good five, ten minutes before Scott sighs, "Vampires."

"You don't know the half of it. Werewolves."

"Werewolves?"

"Werewolves!"

"Dude."

.

When I get into the house about an hour before dinnertime, I toss my keys and wallet on the counter and open the fridge to drink milk out of the carton because I'm a rebel. I'm like James Dean, or Leia Organa. I stick the milk back in the fridge, wipe my mouth on the back of my hand. What Dad doesn't know can't hurt him.

That's not true. He doesn't know about werewolf-hunting vampires, and they can still burn down his house. I sigh and shut the door, and Derek's behind it.

"Shit!" I yell. He at least has the sense to look mildly apologetic while he sort of slinks into my personal space and smells me like a weirdo. I hook my fingers in the belt loops of his jeans, because _haters_. "Hi, Derek," I say, falsely cheerful, even though I am pretty glad to see him in my house again.

He hums in greeting while he pulls my scarf away (taking a second to smirk at it like it's where he's hiding his liquor) and puts his lips to my skin.

"Dude. Dude, I already look like your personal bingo board. Stop it."

He pulls back and glowers at me petulantly. " _Bingo board_?"

"Yeah. Because of, like, those blotter things? I dunno, it made sense to me. I changed my mind. Get back here, I liked that."

He rolls his eyes at me and then ducks back under my jaw.

"I don't actually want you to stop, but I'm curious," I say as I hang onto his shoulders. "You bit me a lot. Am I gonna start a moon cycle, here?"

He grumbles against my skin, and then, because I'm not being groped or humiliated enough, he slides his hand down and grabs my ass. I yelp, offended. Then I sigh. "I guess I'll take that as a 'don’t worry about it, let's do it again,' in which case, keep doing what you're doing."

The thing about Derek's activities involving my body is that he isn't making me forget about the danger coming at us. He's not a distraction, per se. He just sort of makes it seem that much more tacklable a problem. _Not_ that I'm thinking about tackling anybody.

I've never dated anyone before, really.

Actually, I've been on one date. When I was in the 7th grade, my mom's best friend lived a block away from us. Mom's best friend had a daughter named Lucia. She was thirteen, and I had a giant crush on her. (I probably also had one on her brother Manuel, but that's irrelevant because dude was like twenty-three.) Mom and bestie made Lucia take me to her 8th grade dance. Once we got there, she ditched me and made it to second base with this guy Rio, which pissed me off because Rio wasn't even his real name! Rio's real name was Charles Eugene Fisher and I knew him when he smelled like eggs and cried in the library reading _Meanwhile_.

Which—I, of all people, should not be smug about nicknames (even though I started going by Stiles because my real name is thoroughly unpronounceable, not because I wanted people to forget my life before deodorant and Flonase), but Rio—Charlie—was exactly like me, except he'd had the initiative to pretend to be someone else, and he was the one Lucia let under her bra behind the basketball hoops, while I was the one who drank warm Kool-Aid and taught a random 6th-grader to dance.

I never resented Lucia. In fact, she dumped him, too. She was bomb. She still won't accept my Facebook friend request.

I'm actually telling this story to Derek while he kisses my neck, but when I get to the part about the 6th-grader, he pulls back and smirks at me. "You taught someone to dance?"

"Yep," I say.

He raises an eyebrow. "You never struck me as the dancing type."

"I can dance great." I grin at him smugly. "My mom taught me when I was a kid. Wanna see?"

"I," he says, going a little red when I hold out a hand expectantly. "I don't, what _kind_ of dancing? I'm not, that isn't."

I roll my eyes. "You're such a _baby_ ," I say, jerking him to me by the hips. "See, it's real easy, actually, it's just," I say as I awkwardly move him through the steps of a really basic waltz, and he clings to the sleeves of my jacket and stumbles along. I count almost inaudibly, because I know he'll hear it, and then I watch his face, and he's terribly confused. Staring at our feet together like he'd never known he had feet. Just, he had leg stumps, they just ended at the ankle, and suddenly he has these weird, deformed hands attached to them, and—I start giggling. He glares, tries to pull away from me, but I grab the edges of his jacket, and suddenly I have him pressed against the counter, kissing me back breathlessly.

"Der," I say eventually, when one of us has to come up for air or risk dying in my kitchen; "We should definitely be in bed right now."

He grabs my shoulders, spins me about face, and then leads me to my bedroom.

.

"For the record," Derek says, soft and sweet, hours later, "you can't become a werewolf from a hickey."

"Not even, like, eighty hickeys?" I ask.

"How many hickeys do you think it takes to make a bite?" Derek asks, but I fall asleep before I can articulate a response.

.

I wake up before dawn to a bed void of Derek and my phone buzzing with a call from an unknown number. I peer blearily at it, irritated more by the fact that I'm nervous in Derek's absence than the fact that I was woken up at four in the morning by a call from California. I grab it, wrestle it off the charge cord, answer, "You've reached the Swan residence," because damn it, I'm a comedian.

" _Very_ cute," purrs the voice on the other end. "I suppose that makes me who? Edward?"

"Had a feeling it was you," I say, gut sinking.

"You were waiting for my call? Gotta say, hon', I'm _touched_."

I sigh heavily into the phone. "What do you want, Kate."

"You, sugar," she giggles, like it's silly she'd have to point that out. "I've got some family hanging around the station right now. Be a shame if they saw your father and lacked my infinite self-control."

And you know that phrase that people use to describe the moment terror and fear hit you? They say, _my blood ran cold_ , and that's accurate in the way that saying _a tsunami is wet_ is accurate. She titters softly in the background while I feel my head fill up with frigid nothingness. "No," I tell her, as if I'll be able to _will_ her vampirism into nonexistence, or into some state of harmlessness. " _No_ ," I say again when she snorts and busts up laughing at me. "Leave him out of this."

Kate sighs into the phone. "Let's avoid that whole back-and-forth and skip to the part where you hang up and get here."

And maybe it's stupid, but I don't really feel like I have an option here. She hangs up before I can even think about responding. I swear, and reach for my clothes.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Very funny, Kate. Edward, indeed. You're an amalgamation of Edward and James, at this point. 
> 
> I like it when y'all comment!


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> HA HA HA i am so sorry that took so long.  
> enjoy!

And I don't mean to make myself out to be this self-sacrificing, heroic _martyr_ , here. I don't expect you to think I'm some great and wonderful guy for rushing in without even formulating a plan first. It's just that my dad's the last bit of family I've got _left_.

Scott's one of my best friends, I'm hard-pressed to find a reason not to be in love with Derek, and Dad remodeled the extra bedroom in his house so I could live with him. I've got three things to live for, here. I'm a three-legged table. If I lose my dad—I don't even know where I'll _go_. I don't know what I'll _do_. I guess at that point I'd just be _done_ , because I seriously— _seriously_ —don't think I could handle losing my dad.

I go to the Argents without question. There's just as much of a chance they'll actually have him in their cryptic, stylish clutches as the whole threat against my dad being idle and empty. Either way, I'm not risking that shit. I risk my health taking Adderall weird, I risk the integrity of my phone by tossing it around like a hot potato when I'm bored, but I'm _not_ risking my dad. You don't fuck around with my _people_.

The house, when I get there, is ominous. Which—a house containing guaranteed homicidal vampires? That doesn't make any sense at all.

.

The thing is, I _know_ it's a trap. Like, I _know_. I'm pretty good at clocking traps before I go into them, I'm like Admiral Ackbar. So I know it's a trap, and I feel guilty about it, okay.

I'm well aware that Derek has risked his life, multiple times, for my benefit. Like, the car thing, on its own, sure. But as a _result_ of the car thing, there was the _fire_. And then there was all the times where we've had sex, which—no, that wasn't a life risk, I just wanted to remind you that we had sex.

I know this, I know he put himself in harm's way, in the path of the people who murdered his family, to protect me from them, and now I'm just walking straight _to_ them.

I also know that if I had to pick right now between saving my dad from certain death and validating my boyfriend's sacrifices, I'm sorry, but my choice is clear.

.

So here I am. At the Argents' secluded house, deep in the woods. It's stupid.

The house, I mean. The front, the _front_ looks like a regular house. But one of the _walls_ —and I'm not joking about this—is _literally_ made _entirely_ of _glass_. Is that not the stupidest, most wasteful thing you've ever heard of in your _life_? Also, in a forest on a hill in the mountains in NorCal, _how_ impractical is that? I don't get it. Probably took a major kick in their property value's testicles for that one, _nice job, assholes_. I storm into the house without knocking. Leave the door hanging open behind me. "How much does it cost to be this pretentious?" I call up the fancy stairs.

No one answers, so I sort of creep around the house, looking around.

It's one of those super modern houses where the inhabitants clearly spend way too much time arranging their house to look both cozy and artistic. You know, displayed _just so_. The living room is all creamy, white carpets and white tiles and white walls, with cherry red furniture that looks about as comfortable as… Derek at a party. _Pretty_ —but rock hard and horribly unhappy.  

I slink up the stairs, hoping to run into someone that can explain shit to me, but the first room I look in contains someone I was specifically not hoping to run into. "Dad!" I burst out, running to him. He's unconscious on one of those laying-down couches. A lounge. I shake him, and he doesn't wake up, but he's breathing. "Dad, c'mon, we gotta get you outta here," I tell him, smacking his cheek lightly. "Those _fuckers_ , they said they just had their _eye_ on you—"

"Well, obviously things shifted a bit," says someone just behind me, and I jolt hard enough to rattle the lamp on the coffee table. Whirl around to face him.

.

Gerard Argent is the kind of guy that would totally strike you as someone's grandpa if he didn't level you with the kind of steely look you picture people like Ted goddamn Bundy having. See, he's got the izod and the Eddie Bauer shoes and the newsies hat. He smells like Werther's and there's a light dusting of Metamucil on his pullover and he folds his arms like a disappointed father figure—ironic, because I've already _got_ one of those, and I'm only here because of him.

It's the way Gerard carries himself that has me rooted to the spot, hands going cold. He tips his head back, looks at me with blatant amusement, and it makes me want to sock him in the grandfatherly jaw.  

"And," I say, glaring heatedly at him, "why exactly was there a need for things to _shift_?"

He grins at me, entertained. "I needed a reason to make you stay, obviously." He looks at my dad fondly, and I stir, drift over an inch or so, staying between them. "Was my girl Kate's idea to nab him as a bargaining chip."

"He's not a bargaining chip," I snap. "He's my father." I pause. "The sheriff."

Gerard rolls his eyes, waves this away. "He can go back to being your father, the sheriff once he's no longer under my roof."

"Fine." I reach back blindly, unwilling to take my eyes off Gerard for a second, paw behind me until I find my dad's forearm. "Then let him go. I'll stay. Just let him go."

Gerard smiles, and it's _wicked_.

.

Some dudes come in, carry my dad out like a sack of cement. I gnaw furiously at my nails. Gerard lets me dart to the top of the stairs to watch them take him out the front door, but he makes it clear with a hand on my shoulder that I'm not allowed to follow.

"Don't worry," he says. "He'll wake up in a while and think he fell asleep at his desk like normal."

I can't tell if he's making some kind of crack about my dad being a lazy cop or not, but either way Gerard's a smarmy creep and I jerk my shoulder out of his grip. "What do you want with me, anyhow."

He gives me that disturbing grin again, looking like he's got altogether too many teeth to count as a human being. Which—good one, Stiles. He's a vampire. A _vamfuckingpire_. "I want to turn you," he says. "Make you one of us."

My _stomach_ turns. "I don't," I say, and swallow thickly. Try again. "I don't want that."

"I don't see how that information is relevant to me, young man," he says drily, advancing. Herding me back down the hall, away from the stairs. I look around wildly, trying to gauge if there's a possibility of me jumping out the window without breaking my own legs and making it even more achievable for him to catch me. As if he read my mind, he says, "Don't bother trying to escape. You're surrounded."

And that's terrifying. I'm a sixteen-year-old kid, I don't know what I've done that could possibly  warrant a backup army of the undead. I keep backing away. "Why do you want to make me a vampire?" and jesus, it sounds stupid no matter how frightened I am.

Gerard smirks. "Just think about the look on your doggy's face when he finds out the boy he loves is now his sworn enemy?" So does that.

"Derek's _not_ a _dog_ ," I grit out. It's not clever, but I probably get points for passion.

"He's less than human."

"At least he's not a million years old and hanging around with a herd of teenagers," I snap, and he socks me in the mouth. Knocks me right off my feet. I _might_ have asked for that. I scramble back up as quickly as I can and keep backing away from him.

"I'm just trying to keep them from finding new bitches to breed," Gerard tells me smoothly. As if he didn't just hit me with all his strength. A coiled-up twist of panic settles in my gut when I wonder if that's because that _wasn't_ all his strength. "It's why I Turned Allison all those years ago," he goes on, advancing towards me steadily. "She fell for one of them. Didn't listen when Christopher tried to warn her."

"So you locked her into an eternity of blood drinking and mass _murder_?" I shout. He hits me again, harder, and it turns into a comedy of errors, only instead of a comedy it's just a heap of pain; I fall into an end table with a lamp on it and come out sliced up with shards of glass and with my left leg a mess of throbbing, unbearable pain.

Through the buzzing in my head, I hear him loud and clear. "And do you know what happened?" He knocks the upturned table out of the way, drops on one knee beside me. "The dog scorned her. Tried to kill her. Because that's what they do, they kill and bite. Even yours, Stiles. They're animals."

"There is nothing animal about Derek," I manage, teeth grit so tight it's hurting—I hit my head, I'm bleeding, the room is spinning sluggishly— "Not like _you_."

" _Please_ , 'nothing animal about him,'" Gerard says loudly. "If you gave him the chance, he'd eat you _up_. Assuming he hasn't already." He presses the pad of his stone-cold thumb harshly against a bruise on my neck that I already know isn't from just now.

I hiss from the sting of it. "Hilarious."

"Is it, now," Gerard asks solemnly. "Is it really."

" _No_ , genius," I snap. "I guess sarcasm wasn't _invented_ when you were born at the dawn of _time_ , but I—"

He grips my face, my jaw, hard and painful, like he's trying to squeeze the tears out of me. Wrenches my head back, revealing my throat. I can't breathe because of the way he's holding me down, can't move, can't think straight—my heart starts pounding faster and faster, I'm sweating and blinking rapidly, thinking of my father, unconscious and being dragged around by vampires, of Derek, god knows where Derek is, of Scott and Allison and my _mother_ , I want my _mom_ —He opens his mouth, descends on me with his fangs—

Abruptly he's off of me, and I gasp raggedly, drag air into my lungs. It's not enough, I'm in dizzying amounts of pain. I reach down and pull a huge chunk of the lamp out of my thigh. Somewhere to my right, Gerard is in a drag-out fight with someone it takes me a second to identify as Derek—only different. Then I lose myself.

I have vague nightmares about teeth and faces. A hazy memory of Derek looking livid, with red eyes and fangs and claws—someone calling my name frantically, but I'm gone.

.

I wake up with a splitting-ass headache and my foot in a brace, propped up. I grimace; it's neither my first concussion nor my first ankle sprain—not even my first in Beacon Hills. But it's been a while. Certainly since it's been this bad.  

I've also got gauze on both arms and up the shin of my sprained ankle. It takes me a minute to remember the shards of broken lamp. I'm staring at this when Dad blusters into my vision. "Stiles," he says, and he's immediately got my full attention—he's in his uniform, and he looks haggard, heavy bags under his eyes. But he's _alive_ , he's _okay_ —

"Dad," I croak into his shoulder, because he's hugging the shit out of me. I blink tears out of my eyes. Alive.

" _Never_ do that to me again, kid," he says fervently. Giving me an extra squeeze, and I shut my eyes for a moment. Cling to him and savor it.

"Do which, now?" I ask, only somewhat feigning disorientation.

"You were riding in a car with the Argents out by Sagebrush," Dad tells me, grip warm and heavy on my shoulder. "They lost control of the vehicle, crashed into a ravine." He swallows. "You and Allison made it out alive, but… Stiles, I'm so sorry—Kate and her father were killed."

I blink at him groggily, relieved. Mumble, "Very dramatically convenient."

"What?" he asks, squinting, but then his phone rings. "Stilinski," he answers it, striding briskly out into the hall. I feel sort of gutted at the abrupt loss of him, but I take a deep breath. Recover quickly.

I've got a couple quiet seconds to try to get my eyes to focus before Derek slips into the room, stealthy. And suddenly my hazy memories of the fight return to me. He looks human enough now.

He's trying to ease the door gently shut, but it squeaks loudly and he grimaces. I don't care about that; I reach for him imperiously. He darts over to me, presses kisses onto my face while I cling to the folds of his t-shirt, slide my hands wherever I can reach. This irrational need for verification that he's whole, real.

He sits gingerly on the bed, lets his palms skate over my bandages. "If it weren't for me—" he begins, but I sock him in the ribs. Shit, he could at least _pretend_ it hurt. Just a _little_.

" _Stop_ it," I say, preemptively exasperated. "It's not your fault there are _werewolf-hunting_ _vampires_ , baby. Holy _cow_." He opens his mouth to respond, but I'm not having the blame argument with him. "So you killed Gerard and Kate?" Because that, _that's_ cool. That's fucking _awesome_.

He blinks for a moment, wide-eyed, and then frowns. "No," he says. "That's—I killed Gerard. I don't know who killed Kate."

I flatten my mouth into a hard line. Wonder if I can get some info off Dad when he comes back. I'm about to say this when Derek presses his nose into the fuzz of my hair, inhales deeply. I roll my eyes; weirdo. "Was so fucking sure he'd bitten you," he mumbles against my scalp.

"He was gonna," I say. Twist away from him, going for eye contact. "You saved me."

He's pale, still, wan, so I tug on his jacket until he fully leans on me. I push my arms around him, hold him tight. Comb my fingers through his hair, which—the thing about Derek's hair is it looks like it should be stiff with gel, but nope. It literally sticks up, flops around by _design_. He's a natural-born douchebag, with the softest hair I've ever felt in my life. I kiss it, because we're _alive_ , and live people _can_ kiss each other. "You're my hero," I croon to him, and he makes an irritated noise.

"Keep it up and _I'll_ bite you," he grumbles.

I grin. Consider this for a second. "That's not a very good deterrent, Der."

.

Beacon Hills.

I always used to hate it. It's so damn cold and wet. It's like a paper bag with the grease soaked through. It's like a stranger coughing up phlegm near you. It's like a toddler that smells ever so slightly of piss. It's something that happens—like you _know_ it's there. But you don't _want_ it. You don't _decide to live_ there. Beacon Hills is a _fact_ , not a _choice_.

But I dunno. The trees are sort of beautiful when they're filling in with leaves and shit in springtime. Everything's in saturated jewel tones from all the moisture, the air's fresh because of the mountains. The stars, you can see the stars right from the edge of the cliff. Like, you're there and look up and there they are. Right in the Preserve, right near Derek's family's property. Visible through the windshield.

Derek and I press up together in the front seat of the Jeep, and he tastes like my 17th birthday cake and his hands are hot on me through my clothes, and I realise—I'm pretty _happy_. I mean, I'm still not over losing my mom by any means, but I'm _going_ to be, right? I'm _getting_ there. And I've got my dad, and I've got Scott, and Derek—Derek's unzipping my pants. Thank you, yes.

He stops kissing me long enough to lick his palm before he wraps his hand around my dick, and I shudder with pleasure. Derek won't fuck me until I'm eighteen, which—what a stupid boundary, really. What's the real difference between that and what we've been doing? Oh, it's not _penetrative_? Please. He's just creating these imaginary boundaries so he'll feel better about our relationship. Whatever, he can do whatever makes him feel better about the whole situation, so long as he makes the lazy, unhurried birthday handjob an annual tradition. I drop my head back onto the top of the seat, grinning like a motherfucker, and he smirks, watching my face while his fingers slide on me, lubed by precome.

"Ah, fuckin'—" I gasp. Hook one leg over his, just because. "Wh-what if you gave me the bite?"

His hand stutters, slows for a second. Then he swipes the pad of his thumb over the head, making me bite my lip, jerk a little. "No," he says serenely.

"Aw, c'mon. Please? As a birthday gift?" My voice is too shrill for this. "I want red eyes, too."

"They'd probably be yellow," he returns. Nudges his nose behind my ear. I tip my head over, let him do it. The sniffing, you get used to that. It's still weird, but you get used to it.

"Yellow, then," I'm saying. "Green. Blue and purple _striped_ , I don't _care_ —" I have to stop to mewl a little when he scrapes his teeth on my neck. I have some kinks, okay. "Werewolves are rad, and _you're_ rad, and I want to have both of those things rolled up into one."

"You already do," Derek says. "You have me."

That's not what I meant and he knows it. "Please," I say.

"Absolutely not." He's using Dad Voice on me, which my dad never has never used despite being my actual dad, so I can relax about the fact that it has me dripping down Derek's hand, onto my pants.

I lean up, nip at his lower lip. "Think about it?"

"Fine," he says, "but it's not a decision you should take lightly. The bite's a gift, Stiles."

Ooh, I love it when he says my name. "Of course," I say rapturously, hips twitching upward, pushing into his grip. "I've got plenty of time, because you're not going anywhere. Right?"

Derek says, "Absolutely nowhere."

"Ah—your fucking _wrist_ ," I gasp, and then I shoot all over his leather jacket.

He looks unimpressed.

Beacon Hills.

I guess I'll stay for a while.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> none of that was foreshadowing. you're imagining things


End file.
